Remote Access to a Certain Application 1

[soe1]

Hello:
I'm currently on the following situation:

1. I need someone to log into a certain client pc from a different network, What is the best way of providing remote access to a user without giving them administrative privileges?

I'm running the following:

MS SBS 2003 Standard

 

[twoody54]

Go to the firewall and open up port 3389. Have incoming traffic to port 3389 directed to 192.168.0.10 (or whatever IP you gave the PC).

The remote person would then go to start/programs/communications/Remote Desktop and type in your internet IP and hit connect to connect in. If the remote user does not have Windows XP they will have to download and install the client from here...

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/tools/1.0/wxp/en-us/msrdpcli.exe

after installed its in the same location as above start/programs/communications/Remote Desktop

 

[GeorgePal]

Isnt RDC same as the terminal services????

 

[twoody54]

Yes, but on Windows XP it is installed in order to allow remote assistance (if enabled) and doesn't require a TS license. You're restricted (I believe) to just one connection at a time and (I believe) that if someone is on the machine at the time you RDP to it you will log them off. If you look at the services in Windows XP you will notice Terminal Services is listed there...

 

[NortonES2]

You're restricted (I believe) to just one connection at a time - Correct.

(I believe) that if someone is on the machine at the time you RDP to it you will log them off - Also correct.

-------------------------------

If it doesn't leak oil it must be empty!!

 

[soe1]

Would the Remote User type in the external IP or the Internal IP (192.168.0.0)?

 

[twoody54]

The remote user would type in the external IP as they are outside of your network. If you purchased and internet domain name that points to that external IP you can have them type that too... ex)remote.mycompany.com

 

[pmf71]

twoody, that is dangerous...having an internet domain name and having a port mapped directly to a pc. At the very least you would have to restrict the firewall to only allow the ip addresses the admin is trying to connect from. And even if there is no domain name associated with the public IP address, it's still dangerous because a PC behind the firewall can be directly addressed from outside.

You'd be better off configuring the VPN server, and connecting first via vpn and then using RDP with the local IP address of the host.

Furthermore, about assigning static IP's or reserving them, that is not really necessary. WIndows server has WINS and DNS services that you can register the computer name in. All you have to do on the client end is manually add the local IP of the WINS/DNS server to the TCP/IP settings. And of course, you need to remember the computer name that you would want to connect to.

 

[soe1]

thanks for all your responses, they all have been useful in one way or another....

How do I connect using a VPN connection?

 

[pmf71]

It's bit too much to explain how and what about VPN, but look in icrosoft's knowledge base, there are many articles desribing how to configure the Routing and remote access service for VPN.

 

[dgeary]

What's wrong with using

http://{ServerIP

or alias}/remote ?

SBS 2003 comes with Remote Web Workplace built in, so long as the user is in the "Mobile Users" group, and you setup the client computer using

http://{ServerIP}/connectcomputer,

then this feature should be automatically working... and as long as the client computer is XP.

You also have to make sure the Remote Access is turned on for the network by using the CEICW wizard in the Server Management Console, under the firewall settings. Hopefully you have setup your SBS server using 2 nic cards so the internal firewall is working???

We have remote users who bang away on their office computers all day long from home using this.

Don't need VPN, don't need TS, don't need Remote Assistance. setting this up is all wizard based.

You can test all this if you have a SBS2003 server from inside the lan by opening a browser and typing

http://serverIP/remote.

While you are at it, also look at

http://serverIP/exchange

and

http://serverIP/clienthelp.

RWW is one of the biggest selling features of SBS2003... very surprised nobody mentioned it yet.

 

[soe1]

I would greatly appreciate the details on how to set up the RWW on SBS 2003. I have already made attempts but have failed on the following.

1. I have setup the RWW, but I can only access it within the LAN...How do I setup to access outside the network, lets say from my home office?....

2. I tried using my external IP and the connection fails...

Please help me out, as I'm new to all of this....

Thank you for your quick response!