Easy Remote Assistance?

[Gary Sieker]

Hi, Michael

>Okay, I didn't know that VNC Viewer Listener existed. So, what would they 
>do? Run the VNC Viewer, type in my IP (which would have any open ports on my 
>firewall -- I know how to configure it from there), and my listener (which 
>would be running) would connect them, allowing me to control their computer?

It actually depends on who 'they' is.  If you are the help desk
person and 'they' are the people you are supporting, you would be
running the listening viewer and they would be running a vnc
server.  They would click 'Add new client' from the server icon
and type in your IP address.  Their server would then make an
outgoing connection (through their firewall) to your listening
viewer session (must be exposed port).
 
>I don't see why the Server doesn't come in during this process. Do firewalls 
>normally allow outgoing connections over incoming connections? 

>.: Michael S. Potter :.

As described above, the outgoing connection (the user who needs
help) can usually get through their firewall, unless the firewall
he going out through is blocking outbound ports, but the inbound
side (your help desk PC) needs to have an exposed port (I would
recommend using a relatively high, unused range).  Since you are
only exposing a listening viewer on your side, and you are not
using standard ports, the security risk of this setup is fairly
minimal on your side and the user side doesn't have any increased
security risk since their firewall remains unchanged.

For another discussion on using VNC for a helpdesk situation, see
the following thread:

http://www.realvnc.com/pipermail/vnc-list/2002-November/035555.html

Also, if you want to have a custom-built server to send the end-
users, I would highly recommend building your own using Inno Setup
and ISTool.  These are two great, and freely available tools you
can use to build custom intaller programs.  With these tools, you
can set up a vnc server-only install that will automatically
register itself as a service and run itself upon installation along
with setting up the registry settings of your choice.  It's very
powerful stuff.

There's a great how-to on how to do this here:

http://www.darkage.co.uk/vnc/legacy/9xdistro.htm

Cheers,

-Gary



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