Well, that was an ordeal that I don’t want to go through again. I was up until about 2:30am finishing that computer. Then up at 6am to get ready for work. Normally it would be 6:30 or so, but I’m working on “Summer Hours” at my company. It’s a neat concept. They’ll let you work 4 9-hour days, then a 4-hour day on Friday, so you can have a 2 1/2 day weekend every week between Memorial Day and Labor Day. So I opted for 7-5 Monday - Thursday, and 8-12 on Friday. It usually makes for a pretty unproductive Friday, but that’s what Friday’s are for.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. In looking at ways to decrease my travelling between my parent’s house, in-laws, etc., I’ve been looking at some solutions to allow me to troubleshoot their Machines remotely. Luckily there’s numerous options available to us now. I’ll cover a few here, and only the ones I’ve used. I’m sure there are tons more out there, but I don’t have time to research all of them. So here goes…
1. VNC: Choose your flavor of VNC. I’ve used RealVNC, TightVNC, and UltraVNC. I really like UltraVNC, as it has an optional encryption plugin that will use pre-shared AES keys to encrypt all traffic. This is a must when doing remote support over the Internet. The only problem with this, is that I prefer not to leave VNC open to the world, so I try to setup firewall/port forwarding rules on the remote routers to allow my home IP to connect. Normally my home IP stays the same, but sometimes when my router needs a reboot, I lose my DHCP lease and have to get a new IP. When that happens, I have to go back to those routers, and change the port forwarding rules accordingly, which is kind of a pain.
2. Hamachi: I’ve used Hamachi in the past, mainly to share files between some friends. It’s a good tool for setting up a VPN between computers at multiple locations. I guess I missed the memo that LogMeIn bought (or maybe evolved from) Hamachi. Hamachi worked without having to configure any firewall rules. It allows you to create and connect to multiple networks and password-protect those networks. Since it is only password protection, be sure to choose a strong password. Better yet, choose a passphrase, as that will thwart most password-guessing tools. Something like “The Crow Flies At Noon” would be pretty strong. Then you can use one of the VNCs to connect to the machine, without having VNC listening directly on the Internet, and not having to worry about changing port-forwarding rules every time your DHCP lease expires.
3. Remote Desktop: This is Microsoft’s built-in remote support tool. While it’s not bad, I don’t like the fact that you don’t actually get on the console of the machine like you do with VNC. You only get the “virtual desktop”. The thing I do like about this tool, is that it would allow the remote user (parents, in-laws, etc.) to send a “Remote Help Request” to me. If this is done, you actually do get the console, and the end-user can see what you’re doing. Makes it easy to have them follow step-by-step instructions if it’s something they may have to do often. I believe there are some firewall rules you may have to configure, I don’t remember for sure. Here’s some notes from Microsoft’s Help and Support page regarding remote help requests:
- Both you and your assistant must be using either Windows Messenger or a MAPI-compliant e-mail account such as Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.
- You and your assistant need to be connected to the Internet while using Remote Assistance.
- If Windows Firewall is turned on, Remote Assistance will temporarily open firewall ports.
- If you are working on a corporate or local area network, firewalls might stop you from using Remote Assistance. In this case, check with your network administrator before using Remote Assistance
As you can see, there are some restrictions to using this tool, so it’s not a good solution for heterogeneous environments.
4. PcAnywhere: I’ve not used this product in about 4 years, as the free tools really caught up to PcAnywhere and have matched or surpassed it for my purposes. In its prime, it was a great tool with a large feature set. If you have access to it, you can give it a try, but it’s really designed more for an enterprise environment that has some serious $$ to spend, and wants to centralize remote management of a large number of servers.
Those are the remote support tools I’ve used. If anybody has any more suggestions for other/better solutions, I’m all ears.
I’m running on 3.5 hours sleep and lots of coffee. Cranial BSOD imminent due to increasing memory leak. I’ll need a reboot soon.
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UPDATE: Apparently i was mistaken about Microsoft’s Remote Desktop not giving you the actual console. I hadn’t used it in a while, so I tested i out at work, and it does give you control of the console. My bad!
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