Remote Desktop or Assistant?

[Guest]

Im somewhat confused by the facilities provided by remote desktop and
assistant.

I am under the impression that remote desktop is a similar application to pc
anywhere in that it allows you to view your pc and control it as though you
were sitting at it. I had hoped it would allow me to do the following:

I have a number of clients wanting to work from home wanting access data and
applications which are stored on their peer to peer lan at their office,
effectively being another user on that network, albeit not sitting in the
office.

WHAT I DONT WANT IS A PC IN THE OFFICE TAKEN OVER OR LOCKED BY THE EXTERNAL
PC.

Am I expecting too much of XP? If so can anyone recommend a software which
will allow me to do this. (In theory it should be simple as its all down to
IP and the Internet, bit in practice......!)

I tend to use DLink 4 port lan/ADSL Routers which has its own NAT and
Firewall facilities. MY preferred ISP (PLUSNET/FORCE9) provides a static IP
address and the router supplies DHCP server for the network and the other for
the remote PC/LAN.

So far I get a combination of TCP/IP error 773 or 800 on the remote PC
trying to connect to the lan. I have opened port 3389 on the router sited in
the office.

All assistance/clarification would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Ken B]

Hey Paul-

XP isn't capable of doing what you'd like it to. Remote Desktop in XP isn't
like a server's Terminal Services Remote Admin mode (or application for that
matter). Remote desktopping to an XP pro client will lock the computer, as
XP limits itself to one session per machine, with a session being defined as
a user instance.

I think to do what you want, you would need a Terminal Server set up, in
most likely application mode that the users can connect to. Alternatively,
you could use a Citrix server, but the software costs would probably grow
larger than their budget actually is.

Keep in mind, that unless your ISP is providing multiple IPs for that
router, opening a port isn't going to allow a person to connect to any
specific machine, unless the port is forwarded to one specific IP address.
For that matter, you would need to forward the ports on every they gave you
to specific workstations, and use static addressing.

I think they're opening a can of worms that they're not ready to tackle...
especially if they're using DLink routers.

Another idea you could use would be to implement a VPN server, but then the
user would still need to connect to a specific computer (via Remote Desktop)
once connected to the VPN, and connecting and using said computer would lock
it.

Sorry I don't have better news...

Ken

 

[Guest]

Thanks Ken, but that was the conclusion I had come to.

Luckily the client has a spare machine which can act as a "comms server" in
this instance but obviously im expecting far too much from a simple protocol!

Now all I have to do is write the appropriate software and move over Bill
Gates.....

What routers would you recommend if not DLink, I can get most brands but
wont touch Cisco if I can help it.