RFB Specification and Enterprise Edition (WAS RE: Mac OS X)

[Jonathan Gillaspie]

> Well I suppose the main one would be able to connect to servers that 
> support (expect) a username/password combination and be able to 
> specify the username. As to other features, it's a while since I 
> looked at what's on offer in the commercial product, but I do recall 
> thinking that some of them would be useful to us.
>
> I'm now using CotVNC version 2.0b2 which is much better than the 
> previous version, and with the ARD VNC server which seems pretty 
> solid, things are working reasonably well now.
>
> As for things that don't make sense, instead of "Windows 
> Authentication for OSXvnc" think "Mac/Netinfo/<whatever it's called 
> this week> Authentication for OSXvnc".

The current version of the RFB specification doesn't seem to document 
how to do RealVNC's Enterprise Edition encryption/authentication.  I'm 
not certain if this is an intentional omission to keep their Enterprise 
solution proprietary or if they are just busy and haven't had the 
opportunity to update the spec accordingly.  I would be happy to get an 
answer from Wez or someone else at RealVNC on this question?

If they are going to keep that proprietary then I'm disappointed but I 
guess we'll all have to respect RealVNC's decision to separate that 
from the open standard that they started.

I would love to begin offering OSXvnc with a Mac authentication 
protocol that works in conjunction with the Windows Authentication 
protocol used in RealVNC's Enterprise Edition.  I'm also sure that 
Chicken of the VNC would like be able to connect to RealVNC's Windows 
Enterprise Edition servers, this will all happen much easier if we have 
a consistent documented protocol, this is the biggest barrier to seeing 
these feature incorporated into VNCs for other OS's.

--
Jonathan Gillaspie
jonathan "at" redstonesoftware.com
Redstone Software, Inc.
-- Makers of Eggplant, Platform-Independent Automation Software
-- http://www.redstonesoftware.com