Is your computer an Open Invitation for HACKERS? Download free version of Sparktrust Inspector to identify vulnerabilities and problems on your computer (and even your WEBSITES)!
It's happened to many of us. Mom calls up and says that Dad just got a new computer, and he's gotten online, but he can't get his email set up and he needs your help.
Or Cousin Dave just got a brand new iPod and needs help getting music onto it from his massive CD collection. Or you're at work, and you left the link to the website you really needed for your early meeting on your desktop. Or maybe you're at home, and suddenly remember that you left the document you created on your desktop at work. Variations on this theme drive thousands of us to frustration, and thousands to use remote access solutions.
There are quite a few remote access solutions, both built-in to most current operating systems, and as stand-alone applications, or as network-based products. Windows, for instance, includes "Remote Desktop Access" in current systems. You can enable it from the desktop, by right clicking on "My Computer" and selecting the "Remote" tab. Simply place a checkmark in the "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer" box. Note the computer name provided. You can then selectively enable the feature for users by clicking the "Select Remote Users..." button and adding the users you want to have remote access.
To access such a system from a Windows box, you can go to Start->All Programs->Accessories->Communications->Remote Desktop Connection. You'll get a dialog looking for your login information and the computer name. You can substitute the IP address for the computer name, as you can in most cases.
If you have a Macintosh, you can download the RDP software from Microsoft that will allow you to access the Windows computer remotely.
If you are using a Linux system, you can use rdesktop ( a command line utility ) or Gnome-RDP - a front-end for rdesktop and several other remote tools. The problem with this approach is that it's complex and insecure to make this solution available for people not on our local network.
If you have a Macintosh computer, you can enable remote access in System Preferences. Click on the "Sharing" icon, and put a checkmark next to "Screen Sharing". You can click on "Computer Settings", and put a checkmark in "VNC viewers may control screen with password:" and put in a password. Once you have this set up, there are several ways to access your remote desktop. You can use any VNC client on a Windows, Linux, or Mac system. If you have the most recent version of Mac OSX (Leopard), you can use the Screen Sharing program for remote access - select the computer name in your Finder Sidebar, then click on the button that says "Share Screen". It will prompt you for your login credentials for the other system, and then you'll get the remote desktop. On Linux, you can use tightvnc or RealVNC, or vncviewer.
Is your computer an Open Invitation for HACKERS? Download free version of Sparktrust Inspector to identify vulnerabilities and problems on your computer (and even your WEBSITES)!
On Windows, you can use TightVNC or any other VNC capable viewer. In addition to the solutions above, .Mac (Dot Mac) and Leopard, when combined, offer a "Back to My Mac" solution that allows you to engage screen sharing securely to any Mac you have authorized on your .Mac account for Back to My Mac.
If you have a Linux system you want to access remotely, you can use X11 on the local network. This is non-trivial to configure, but it offers some interesting possibilities. The software you would run on your remote system is called an "X Server", while the machine you're accessing remotely runs "X Clients". This can be confusing from a terminology perspective.
There are X Servers for Windows and for Mac OS X (it's built in to OSX, in fact). X11 was designed to make the display experience as location-agnostic as possible, which means you can actually have, say, just a browser window from the remote linux machine show up on your local machine. Again, this is complex to configure securely, and certainly nothing you'd ever want to make available from the Internet. The second solution is VNC. You can use vncserver to start a VNC session on your Linux box, and access it from your other machines with a generic VNC viewer. VNC Viewers are available for nearly every platform in the world. For remote GUI access on Linux, VNC is a good solution provided you use SSH to encrypt the session by tunneling your VNC Client's connection through an SSH tunnel. That's enough to tie up an entire article; it's sufficient to say that if you don't know that those terms mean, you don't want to try it based on what information this article has room to provide.
All the solutions discussed so far are for local access. This means that you can connect to the other machine from the same physical network - like your house, or your job. What if you need to access your home system from work? Well, then we turn to other solutions. If you've got the hardware and expertise, and your IT department allows it, you can configure a VPN between your work computer and your home system, and then use the same methods listed above to access your computer. But presuming you don't have that kind of access, there is a solution - or three. In fact, a Google search for "Remote PC access websites" turned up a list of quite a few, ranging from extremely expensive to free. The first such service most people think of is GoToMyPC.com; you can get a 30 day trial if you want to experiment.
Most only support Windows on the remote end. An exception to this general rule comes from LogMeIn.com, which supports both Windows and Mac clients. There may be a similar solution that supports all three (Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX), but not easily accessible. Logmein.com provides remote access via web browser, with many very nice features. One example is the way it handles desktop resolution. If you are connecting to a machine with much higher resolution than the system you're connecting from, the desktop will appear small and shrunken. With logmein.com, you can select the desktop resolution of the remote system from a drop-down menu, bringing the remote desktop to a viewable size. The really important thing about this change is that it's non-permanent. When you get back to work after setting your work resolution to 1024x768 so it would fit on your laptop's screen, you'll discover your setting unchanged. It supports clipboard synchronization and many other conveniences. Plus, you can walk Cousin Dave through installing it on his computer, then (with his approval) take over his desktop and show him how to rip a cd and put it on his ipod. Remote access allows 'family support techs' to help their relatives and friends with technical problems rapidly and with a lot less frustration than trying to "talk them through" troubleshooting on the phone.
As we become more mobile, remote access becomes more useful to more people. When you have a desktop and add a laptop, remote access might just become critical to the way you work. The information provided here will help you sort out your remote access needs and how to approach your customized solution.
Is your computer an Open Invitation for HACKERS? Download free version of Sparktrust Inspector to identify vulnerabilities and problems on your computer (and even your WEBSITES)!
admin | June 9th, 2008
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