For all the IT gurus out there

How much are you looking to spend?


We use Linktivity WebInteractive here where I work.
It's Java based and it works well, even over Dialup.

 

Look up Dameware Mini Remote. Its a fairly robust remote solution as well. Intuitive to use.

 

I can't really recommend any remote-admin packages, as I'm mostly a Unix admin these days -- I'm not sure how useful SSH would be for Windows desktop administration, though you might be able to do a few things.

On the satellite connection, you simply may not be able to do any remote administration of any kind unless it's done in "reverse" (the machine to be administered acts as a client to the remote-admin service). Because of the distances involved, satellite communications typically involve a minimum of 400 MS or so latency under perfect conditions. This isn't an optimal platform for TCP/IP communications, which involve a lot of back-and-forth communication for error correction and link optimization. A common technique to compensate for this is to special special hardware and/or software at both ends of the connection which implement a modified version of the protocol that improves latency by skipping a lot of the error correction and control. A side-effect of this is that it isn't a true end-to-end connection, so applications that depend on allowing arbitrary connections to ports in LISTEN states won't work, which includes remote administration, server applications, etc.

 

http://www.networkstreaming.com/

/me leaves out a few paragraphs of useless information that everyone already knows.

Edit: Actually forget that shit, they totally raised the price. We bought it for about $500 a year ago.

 

We use a Citrix program called GoToAssist, similar to GoToMyPC. Works great, might be a little $$$. Theres always VNC heh.

 

You can use netmeeting, it's built into every windows version. The user can connect with you then share the desktop and that will give you complete control (little manual process but it works and it's free)


Just an idea

 

If you have a firewall then netmeeting is death.

 

I use VNC for lightweight stuff. It's free so the price is right.

Sourceforge has a lot of listings for client and server apps. I like it because I can control a mac with a pc and vice-versa.

 

If you use VNC, you might try tunneling it through SSH for some added security. I've done it on a couple of Unix systems, and it was pretty easy. I can't imagine it would be much harder with Windows.

 

I've used RealVNC for years now. I think it's fantastic.

www.realvnc.com

 

I used RealVNC on a couple of Windows NT systems, it always worked very well. TightVNC might work well for you too, as it's optimized to work well over slower links.

 

Honestly, if you're not able to resolve her host name I'm not sure other applications will help. You're probably running into a Firewall issue or remote access not being enabled. I assume you tried using the IP Address. Anywho, honestly, I only ever use Remote Desktop to administer servers, but I've never had issues with it over the Internet or over a VPN as long as everything is set up.

 

Yeah, tunneling through SSH is fun. I was in ATL Intl for a nice 3 hour layover (on my way back home from a contracting job for the Army) and was trying to use their "public" wifi. All HTTP requests just took you to their walled garden crap, but I noticed that there was no packet filtering in-place for SSH (IPsec was blocked tho). I tunneled port 8080 back across the ssh tunnel to port 80 on a server that had squid installed. I spent the next 2 hours and 55 minutes surfing...man it worked great, and was totally encrypted to boot! I bet their network "engineers" were going crazy. That is if they even cared, or knew.


WhoOOOoOOooOOsh!!!

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Oh, and on the remote control from someone behind a firewall crap. Find something that'll initiate the connection from their end, so the "firewall", or NAT/PAT router will open the connection and allow traffic to pass. Port-forwarding is elementary for us IT people, but regular people won't know how to set that up to allow incomming connections :/