Offer Remote Assistance Question

[Alan H.]

I need to be able to remote control workstations of our remote users who use
our VPN. We have a couple of employees who permanently work at offsite
locations. Currently, whenever we need to make a config change they have to
Fed Ex their laptop back to us. This is inefficient and expensive. Most of
the time these users are connecting via dial-up. Remote Desktop doesn't
work because it logs off the user when I log on, thus disconnecting the VPN
connection. I've tested Remote Assistance, which works beautifully but it
requires end user initiation. To simplify things for the end user, I'd like
to be able to "offer Remote Assistance". As I understand it, when I "offer
Remote Assistance it attempts to use the first available TCP port above
1024. Our firewall is blocking this traffic and opening up all ports
greater than 1024 is not an option. I've already opened up TCP ports 135
and 3389 and as I mentioned earlier, Remote Assistance works just fine as
long as the end user initiates.
Question:

Is there a way to configure Remote Assistance so when I "offer Remote
Assistance" it uses a static port? If so, I can configure my firewall to
allow traffic on that single static port.

Here are a couple of KB articles I was reading.

<http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/rafaq-technical.mspx>
<http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306298>

Interestingly, they mention the dynamic port issue only when connecting via
Windows Messenger but I'm experiencing the same behavior by going to
Start -- Help and Support -- Use Tools to view your computer information and
diagnose problems -- Offer Remote Assistance.

 

[Bill Sanderson]

This article has more information in regards firewalls and Remote
Assistance:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;555179&Product=winxp

Note that this article was written by a fellow (and unrelated) MVP--not
Microsoft.

I'm not at all sure of the answer to your basic question--I've never tested
"offer" with a dialup connection, so I'm unclear whether it eliminates the
dropping of the connection.

 

[Laurel]

This is why I like using NetMeeting.

This article has more information in regards firewalls and Remote
Assistance:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;555179&Product=winxp

Note that this article was written by a fellow (and unrelated) MVP--not
Microsoft.

I'm not at all sure of the answer to your basic question--I've never tested
"offer" with a dialup connection, so I'm unclear whether it eliminates the
dropping of the connection.