The Virtual Panel should be on the same Local Area Network as the control processor.

There are tools to finds what is on the network and their IP address etc. and can also be found through the menu on the XP-8 Processor and obviously you know how to see your computers IP address.

I would ensure the above first and then you can work from there.
Is the Virtual Panel not connecting a regular occurrence ?

It also sounds like you need a better support person :)