any good remote desktop/ VPN solutions

[mcveigh]

I've been out of the networking loop for a while. I mainly work in the medical field now. My boss mentioned to me that he wanted to remotely get some data off some systems to save us driving time. I have previously used VNC, SSH, and remote desktop in different ways.

one of my fav solutions. was a small pc running linux at the remote location. with only SSH open. I could login, run VNC and keep an eye on the entire network.

here is what i'm looking at.
These are sleep labs that collect data at night on people then the data has to be analyzed by hand. usually we just drive out to the locations but as the business is growing the driving time is hurting us.

remote desktop: XP pro
local connection XP or vista

remote location: small office with a standard firewall, probably linksys, netgear, or cisco
standard internet connection (most likely cable)

Ideal solution: be able to remote desktop in to see what the techs see in case they have issues at night. also be able to print to the remote printers

most basic essential: be able to transfer files off the remote PC to be analyzed locally.

I'll be talking with the IT people at our locations (these are not our offices, these are owned by others, ,we just manage their sleep labs)
Some might give me free reign of the network others may only open up a few ports for me.
I think it would help if we setup the sleep lab PC's on their own sub net with their own router I could control.

I'm open to suggestions for any hardware or software.
thanks!

 

[TheKub]

I do support for friends and family and use Hamachi. Its secure and so easy I can talk my mother through the installation and setup over the phone.

For commercial use there is a license fee of $35-$40 per PC per year. Now this is PC to PC VPN you will not have access to the full network (which may be convincing to the labs?) but if you have the credentials to RDP you can access anything on the client network through that RDP session. I'd imagine that printing would be limited to shared printers on the machines that you are connected to.

 

[Jeff7181]

Take a look at Visionapp Remote Desktop. We use it at work for quick remote access to about 600 servers and it works quite well. You can open multiple remote sessions and they're opened in tabs within the same window.

 

[mcveigh]

hmm sounds like it might be the ticket. I also like the fact that I can tell the boss to call them for tech support instead of me

 

[Tbirdkid]

you can use the free version of log me in and it should do the trick...

 

[TheKub]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
Take a look at Visionapp Remote Desktop. We use it at work for quick remote access to about 600 servers and it works quite well. You can open multiple remote sessions and they're opened in tabs within the same window.

Does it let you copy files from the remote station or print to remote printers?

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: TheKub

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
Take a look at Visionapp Remote Desktop. We use it at work for quick remote access to about 600 servers and it works quite well. You can open multiple remote sessions and they're opened in tabs within the same window.

Does it let you copy files from the remote station or print to remote printers?

It's basically an RDP manager... so... no. That would have to be set up on each server/workstation.