Remote Assitance with multiple computers behind Router?

[Karl04]

Hi

Our company has multiple offices, and we want to be able to fix the
computers at each office remotely, with Remote Desktop Connection
(RDC), or more specifically the "Invite a friend to connect to your
computer with Remote Assistance" feature in Windows XP Help (which is
basically just a form of RDC).

All of our offices have a broadband connection that goes into a router
(Linksys WRT54G), and all of the computers have XP Pro.

We have tried to use the "Invite a friend to connect..." feature and
it hasen't worked- I think because of the required port forwarding in
the router. The way I understand RDC in a router environment is that
you have to forward the 3389 port to the specific computer you want to
connect to. This would be fine if we only had 1 computer at each
office, but we have multiple computers, and they all "break" from time
to time. Our staff is not comfortable enough with computers to be
able to log into the router and change the configuration around to
forward port 3389 to the "broken" computer.

Is there a way to configure the router so that the "Invite a friend to
connect..." feature will work with _all_ of the computer behind a
router?

 

[Huei Wang [MSFT]]

Remote Assistance uses UPNP to setup port forwarding, check to see if your
router support UPNP.

 

[Guest]

If UPnP is not wroking or avialabe, you can use port triggering in the Linksys Router/Firewall Setup. It should be under Advanced, Forwarding. Set up a line that has 3389 on all four fields of the line

- Sea

 

[Sooner Al]

You could edit each invitation file to reflect different ports...Look at the RCTICKET field...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q300692

--
Al Jarvi (MS-MVP Windows Networking)

Please post *ALL* questions and replies to the news group for the mutual benefit of all of us...
The MS-MVP Program - http://mvp.support.microsoft.com
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights...

 

[Guest]

I recently did this using Remote Desktop Connection with two small offices with 5-6 computers each behind a Linksys router, one side on cable modem and the other on DSL

First I assigned a static IP address (in local area network properties) to each machine I wanted to remotely connect to.

Then I changed the listening port on each machine so each machine had a unique Listening port number. The default listening port for Remote Desktop is 3389. I don’t like using this because that would be a popular port to strobe by evil doers so I change it. To change the RDC listening port on an XP machine go to Knowledge Base article Q306759. I usually start with 3390 and increment sequentially.

Next, you will need to configure the router so it will forward the correct connection to the proper machine. In the router go to the Advanced tab then Forward. Here enter the port number and matching ip address for each machine you configured

This will work for Remote Desktop Connection. Remember to assign a password for your RDC administrator login account

This may also work with “Invite a friend†if the invite uses the Listening port assigned to RDC when making the request for help

Rich Adam