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WinXP Remote Desktop

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WinXP Remote Desktop
Has anyone used this facility? It's absoluely brilliant! Congrats to Microsoft for this really neat job they've done.

I can sit in my office and take control of my XP box at home and I can get passed some firewall restrictions set up in my office through briging the net connections. Marvellous! :-)

Cheers

- wil
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Re: [Wil] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
>>>Has anyone used this facility? It's absoluely brilliant! Congrats to Microsoft for this really neat job they've done. <<<

Yup..and it probably brought out 500+ new back-doors to Windows with it Tongue

Andy (mod)
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Re: [Andy] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
No. It's actually pretty secure. All the information is encrypted. That's all you do is open up a UDP connection on a port number of your choice. It's just the same as having any other port open on your machine (ftp, http etc. etc.), theoritcally.

- wil
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Re: [Wil] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Exactly...theoretically! In my opinion its not really that much use...can you disable it on your computer? If not, that is a very big flaw.

LOL...its normally you having a go at Microsoft and their OS Wink

Andy (mod)
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Re: [Andy] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Yeah. It's disabled by default (bviously).

I know. It's ironic, isn't it? But I bash Microsoft for things I don't like 0 but when they (re)create something I like I give credit where credit is due.

It's fantastic. I leave my XP machine on at home, hooked up to the 'net with my new DSL line :-) and then go to work and remote-desktop into my machine at home. I can then controll everything on my home machine and get around over-cautious firewall restrictions in work and I can Kazaa and IRC again. Marvellous. :-)

- wil
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Re: [Wil] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Yeah it's a good feature. Have used it to help my sister cross country several times.

-Scott
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Re: [ArmyAirForces] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Ah. Now you're thinking of RemoteAssistance.

- wil
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Re: [Wil] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Ah, you are correct.
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Re: [Wil] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
In Reply To:
I can then controll everything on my home machine and get around over-cautious firewall restrictions in work and I can Kazaa and IRC again. Marvellous. :-)

hmmm, great to know that you get around firewalls and control what's on your machine.

Crazy

openoffice + gimp + sketch ... Smile
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Re: [QooQ] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Sorry, I should og phrased that better.

The firewall at my office's network has very strict restrictions, meaning I can not IRC and use other ports through it. With Remote Desktop I've created a hole in my office firewall for the remote desktop so that only leaves one hole in the office firewall and then from there I can piggyback from my home computer to access any network I wish, therefore I'm kinda bypassing my office's firewall without comprimising too much on security.

- wil
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Re: [Wil] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Sorry Wil I was being smart about M$ not you eh!

hmm, now you got me worried. Did you open a port in your firewall then use Remote Desktop or did you use Remote Desktop to drill through?

openoffice + gimp + sketch ... Smile
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Re: [QooQ] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Well the firewall on my office gateway is set to allow any port to open if the originated request can be verified as an outgoing request from the network.

My home machine I needed to make a hole for the port I decided to use Remote Desktop on.

- wil
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Re: [Wil] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
ahh, I get what you're saying. I was worried that this could be used in a bad way. lot's of people out there like to take advantage of M$.

thanks for the clarification.

openoffice + gimp + sketch ... Smile
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Re: [QooQ] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Well, technically anyone who has enabled Remote Desktop on their machines, are vunerable to attack. All you need is a Remote desktop client *and* the password and you're away. But of course, this can be said for FTP, SSH, SCP, Telnet, Gopher etc. etc.

- wil
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Re: [Wil] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
When u speak of creating a hole at home, how did you go about that. I want to hit one of my machines at home from the office and haven't got it figured yet.

what usage for url of your home machine?

do u have a router at home? I've got a router and 3 machines, I only want to get to one of them.

ideas?



Thanks in advance,



Dewey320
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Re: [dewey320] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
I've got a linux based machine running as my router / gateway. I just made a hole in the firewall in that which then applies to all the machines on my network. I don't have indiividual firewalls on each machine.

- wil
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Re: [dewey320] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Usually you can designate a single computer to be exposed to the internet (a DMZ host I think). In that case, all ports are opened and redirected to that computer.

Another solution is to use your routers ip sharing software to set up port fowarding for the port designated for remote desktop for that particular computer.

For example, my roomate and I are running personal web sites off our computers. Port 80 is blocked by our ISP, so I designated port 8080 for my roommate and port 1010 my computer. I then set port 8080 on our IP to be sent to port 80 on his LAN address, and the same for my computer. We have to use URL aliasing (a framed page hosted by DNS2GO) to hide the port numbers to make the addresses easier to remember, but it works okay.

--Philip
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Last edited by:

sponge: Jul 29, 2002, 4:05 PM
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Re: [sponge] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Wil/Sponge, thanks for the excellent replies. This is good info that I will use but I should have given you more info. (newbie mistake i know)

I do use dns2go which gives me an xxxxx.d2g.com url. Works fine for my FTP server running on default port 21. In order to make this work I had to set my linksys cable/dsl router to forward port 21 traffic to the ip of my machine running the FTP server app. Works like a dream.

I added config in the router to fwd port 3389 (default of WinXP rem desktop) to the same ip which happens to be the same PC that's running the FTP server. When I go to the office and try to hit that home machine I open Remote Desktop connection and for the url I enter xxxxx.d2g.com where xxxxx is my personal "fake" domain. It never gets an answer and times out. My FTP server works fine no matter where on earth i'm at.

I've tested the Remote Desktop connection while at home (client and server both behind the router) and it works fine. When I get to the office it's been a no-go so far.

I realize there are several potential road blocks here but wondered if you might be able to tell me which ones to check first.

Once again thanks for the first replies, much appreciated.



dewey320
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Re: [dewey320] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Two things I can think of.

Open up a hole for Remote Desktop on your XP machine at home. If you have firewall configured on this connection, it should be in your Advanced options or something.

The other thing is that you might need your Network Administrator at work to put a hole in the company's firewall to allow you to connect out to your remote desktop.

- wil
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Re: [Wil] WinXP Remote Desktop In reply to
Thanks, I'll give it a shot.



dewey320