SC WORKING -- yahoo!, how-bout that repeater thing

[tedpenner]

I have the SC working and have confirmed that I can do remote help desk for folks from afar. I have a "ready for production" copy now with the encryption added and working, and with all my graphics and chosen text. I have dyndns configured for my dynamic IP and all is well there too. What trouble am I likely to run into actually trying to use UVNC SC for support?

Am I likely to be able to provide support from another location other than my office? If so, what are my next steps?

[dhtseany]

Well, as it stands now, no you're stuck at your desk. The way I overcame that limitation was I setup my listener on my server, then connect into said server using RDP (remote desktop connection). It works well and it lets me get the job done.

However, I too would like to know more about this. It would be easier to have a more dynamic means of connecting to the host PC without having to be at your machine at work/home.

Anyone else offer some insight?

Peace
Sean

[B]

Yes. There are really only two ways I know of, other than the workarounds such as your RDP one or similar VPN-based connections.

First, you could encode a dynamic DNS name, rather than an IP address, in your SC. Then whenever you're roaming, you would change the dynamic DNS entry, and wait/hope for it to propagate to the remote client.

Second, you could use a VNC repeater somewhere, and both you and the client would connect to it. The ChunkVNC project is designed to make this setup easy, but you can do it with regular UltraVNC and, I think, with SC too.

There are a few public VNC repeaters, but I would prefer running my own. I haven't had great luck with this yet, though.


Edit: I just noticed that the repeater itself has some kind of dynamic DNS support -- I didn't know that! I also don't know how it works.

[tedpenner]

The ChunkVNC project is designed to make this setup easy.

Perfect. It sounds like the next natural progression then. I understand that there is more of a chance of a security issue on the end-user side that might prevent them from connecting. I 'interpreted' based on some badly put together data, that ChunkVNC wouldn't have quite as much luck allowing customers to connect as the SC option would due to the fact that it was a different type of EXE or something. I didn't fully understand this. Can you explain?

[B]

Well, not really, I can't explain your misconception, but as we've tried to say in other threads, ChunkVNC bundles a copy of the repeater and tries to make things relatively easy and simple.

The inclusion of the repeater makes it MORE likely, not less likely, that customers will be able to use it. You need to understand that there are three parts involved - server, viewer, and repeater. Once you set up the repeater so that EVERYONE (including you as you roam) can get to it, you don't have to deal with any other port forwarding. The repeater becomes the central server (just like GoToMyPC's central server, or AOL/AIM's) making it simple to "traverse" firewalls at both ends.

I haven't had a lot of luck getting this to work reliably for me though.