The secret of getting remote assistance to work from behind a firewall is to make sure that Universal Plug and Play (UPNP) is enabled on both firewalls and use MSN or Windows messenger to establish the connection between the systems.

UPNP is a feature that is included in most home firewalls but many times is not enabled by default. You’ll have to read the owner’s manual that came with your firewall to learn how to log into your firewall’s web page to change the setting. The setting is usually on one of the advanced setup pages.

Enabling UPNP allows MSN or Windows messenger to:

1. Determine that it is behind a firewall
2. Ask the firewall for its internet address
3. Open and close ports on the firewall (above 1024) to allow the remote assistance programs on each end to connect to each other directly

You might be concerned about enabling UPNP due to security issues. There was a Windows security issue several years ago that involved a buffer overflow in the UPNP service in Windows XP. Currently, Microsoft has UPNP turned off in Windows. To make remote assistance work you don’t need to enable UPNP in Windows just on the firewalls.

After enabling UPNP on both ends, contact each other using MSN or Windows messenger. The person who needs help presses the “Ask for Remote Assistance” button.

Messenger will use UPNP to open a random TCP/IP port for the duration of the remote assistance and it will automatically close it when you’re finished.