There is lots of good content out here on how to setup your Slingbox (see Installing Your Slingbox), but I wanted to explicitly call out a link to the Sling Media support knowledge base that will be particularly helpful if you'd like to connect the Slingbox across a firewall protecting your home network: Using the SlingPlayer behind a Company Firewall.

What this article doesn't tell you is...

The linked article suggests that you can use www.whatismyip.com to identify your WAN IP address. This works, but only if your address is static. For many companies that's true, but most of us aren't exactly watching TiVo at work. Most homes, however, do NOT have a static IP address on the WAN. Instead, the address is dynamic -- moving around at will within your subnet.

Then what do you do? Well, it's fairly straightforward to deal with this configuration IF you A) own your own domain and B) have a computer at your home that's always on.

Here's what you do...

1) Select a machine on your home network that's always on. For me, I have a media server in the entertainment center and a file/web server in the basement. Either would work. Even your office computer would, as long as you don't ever turn it off.

2) Download and install a program like DirectUpdate, and install it on the selected box.

3) Configure DirectUpdate (or equivalent) to log onto your account with whoever does your DNS services (for me it's ZoneEdit) and update your DNS record whenever your IP address changes.

4) So, if you own your own domain -- for instance, www.thesimpsonfamily.net -- you can configure your DNS to handle a home.thesimpsonfamily.net domain. Then, DirectUpdate will change this "pointer" to point to your WAN IP address every time it changes.

5) Configure your SlingPlayer software to point to "home.thesimpsonfamily.net" rather than an IP address.

Hope this helps you out. Kick off a discussion, and let me know.