Advanced Information and Configuration
I am going to cover some details I omitted from or alluded to in my sections above. By no means is this information required, but you might find it interesting or helpful.
General Settings For A Smooth Connection
The key thing to remember about remote connection is it is just a constant series of screenshots from the host. This said, if you can reduce the size of the picture data your connection is going to “appear” faster. There are several ways to accomplish this through your client’s configuration options:
- Use 8-bit (256) colors.
- Remove background images.
- Do not show mouse movements on the client.
- Raise the compression level. Note, this will lead to more blurry image.
For your convenience, here is a screenshot of the settings I prefer when using TightVNC. You can tweak them to the settings you like:
Advanced Terminal Server Options
As mentioned above, TS overs many more features over standard VNC:
- Integration to the Windows OS.
- Dynamic screen resizing.
- Connect client disk drives.
- Connect client printers. This requires you have the printer drivers for the local printer loaded on both the host and client.
- Play host computer sounds on local computer. Do not plan on playing your music library over this though.
Controlling Your Local IP Addresses
It is important to remember local IP addresses assigned by your router, are subject to change because your router acts as a local DHCP server which works just like an ISP’s DHCP server. For the most part your local IP will not change, but to be sure you can either set your operating system to always use a particular local IP or you can configure your router to reserve IP’s. If your router supports the IP reservation feature, you can set this up in the configuration (check your router’s documentation). Since not all routers support it, I will cover how to configure your OS to use the same IP. You will need to know your gateway address, so if you are unsure, check your IP configuration like we did above and note this value.
Transferring Files
If you would like to transfer files to the host computer while connected, there are several ways to accomplish this:
- Email them to yourself. This is my preferred method, as you simply send an email to yourself with the files attached and then open the email on the other computer.
- Set up an FTP server. This is not as hard as it sounds. A quick Google search on “[your OS] FTP server” should give you everything you need to know.
- For TS users, use the connect your disk drives option. Warning though, this seems to run unusually slow.
Connection to Multiple Machines in the Same Local Network
What if you have more than one machine you want to connect to in your local environment? No problem. Here are some ideas on how you can accommodate this:
- Use TS on one and VNC on the other. Of course, this assumes you have a machine with Windows XP Professional installed.
- Run the VNC server on an alternate port. Remember, port 5900 is the default for VNC, however you can configure it to run on 5901 or 5902, etc. Just remember you need to forward the respective port to the appropriate machine at your router.
- Jump from box to box. Login remotely to your machine and from there connect to the other machine on your network using the local IP. I would not recommend this because it is pretty archaic and adds a lot of extra overhead.
Security Considerations
In order to be responsible, I should mention neither of these methods I discussed are secure. Since the connection requires a password to establish, realistically, it will keep just about everyone out, however if you need something absolutely secure you should explore other methods such as SSH tunneling or a VPN.
Conclusion
Congratulations, you are now an expert on remote connection! I hope this article has you up and running and you are enjoying your “everywhere computing”. As always, please let me know what you thought about this article. Even better, let me know what you think while connected to your home computer from another computer.
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Great artical only one thing wrong can’t see any of the images.
Great job. Keep up the good work.
It this also included in your book on “build your own network”?
Thanx
Another remote access tool to take a look at is I’m InTouch – http://www.imintouch.net – that costs about half the price of GoToMyPC. It also has a neat feature of letting you access your outlook email and transfer files from almost any mobile phone.
how to make a remote desktop connection in linux?