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Anyone using UltraVNC?

F

Felecha

Golden Member
At work we use pcAnywhere to reach remote customer sites, over Dialup connections (broadband is not an option for these customers, much as we would like it). It's very very important to us, and we've had some trouble with it lately. Randomly, spontaneously, a pcAnywhere Host will just become unreachable. We can dial in, and listen to the modems communicating, and at the point it goes silent, where normally there is a wait of several seconds for a Desktop to arrive, it just sits there until it times out after a couple of minutes. So some kind of connection happens, but no desktop comes.

It's happened maybe 4 or 5 times over 6 months. Big pain because a technician has to be sent out to manually reboot the Host machine (all machines are Dell Dimension 8300 with XP).

A guy in another department here just told me about an Open Source app called UltraVNC. I downloaded it and have set it up between 2 of the computers here and set up the Dialup and Incoming Connection, the SErver and the Client and all that, and it works just fine, at least so far. And it even appears to be a good deal faster, as he said he has found it to be. He has used it for quite a while and says it has been solid for him so far. It's also free. But I can't just jump right in and switch because the Host failures have been embarrassing for us in front of customers and something unknown and untried (except for my friend down the hall) is not what I want right now.

Any testimonials?

And an intriguing idea is - why not have BOTH installed? A single dialup connection, but if the remote end can distinguish which server it is supposed to connect me to, one could back up the other. But then I fear that they would compete for similar resources and really make a mess of things.
 
All of the VNC applications are rock solid.

tightvnc
realvnc
ultravnc

We are currently using ultravnc to manage about 200+ computers for typical system / user problems. We also have RDC as a failover solution.
 
I use ultravnc on 15 client computers at remote facilities. Works fairly well for me.
Please read the Faq's on the sourceforge site about dialup connection settings. Don't use the video hook driver, for instance.
faq
 
I use both XP's Remote Desktop and UltraVNC. RD seems a little smoother when connecting to my home desktop while at work, but UltraVNC works nearly as well after installing the video hook driver.

UltraVNC is especially nice with the file transfer features....which RD doesn't have.
 
OK, thanks all of you.

But skyking says don't use the video hook driver, Blue Weasel says use it.

???

What does it do? I know the guy here said do it, it goes lots faster
 
OK, I'll have to go back to the guy at the other end of the building and ask him - I know he said he uses both dialup and broadband connections to the customer sites he deals with
 
His product is completely separate from the one we build, and generally runs on Windows 2000. His is a digital recording system, ours is an alerting system
 
If at all possible, do a test with somebody present at the remote site. You'll find out right away what settings work best for a dialup. I have kicked myself off by messing with the settings on the remote machine😱
 
Well lucky that I can play with it initially here at work with a substantial LAN. I can just walk down the hall if I want.

What settings would you mess with?

Interesting - I set up a 2-stage configuration to mock up what we have at real customer sites. Daily I use pcAnywhere to get into the "Admin Station" at the site, from which I can start a pcAnywhere session to the other 4 machines on the private LAN there, using TCPIP connections. So I can look at any of the machines there from here, all through the initial dialup

So I set up a version of it here with UltraVNC, and it works just fine. In fact it really does seem faster. I also played with connecting to the Admin (here in the test setup situation) using UltraVNC and THEN went over to the other LAN connected machine using pcAnywhere, which succeeded. More of a curiosity than anything, but I have been trying to think this through as I investigate - will I have to actually uninstall pcAnywhere in all the machines so I don't invite conflicts? Is it enough to just make sure no pcAnywhere hosts are running at the site? I don't see why I can't do an install and configuration of all the UltraVNC stuff over the pcAnywhere connections and then close up pcAnywhere, just leave it installed in case we want to go back to it.
 
Like I said before, do a test over dialup. you are not going to see the same results. It will work fine, I am sure. I would not deploy it after only testing over the LAN though.
 
Maybe I wasnt clear, or maybe I'm missing something.

In my test setup here I connect to a machine down the hall using a dialup and VNC. Then when I have the VNC connection and the desktop of that machine on my desktop in my office, I connect further to the second machine over TCPIP. And it worked using VNC for the second hop, and then for pcAnywhere for the second hop, all the while with the VNC dialup connection to the first hop machine.

 
Actually, if I can ask further - the whole reason for this is that pcAnywhere has been just a little unreliable. That is maddening for us because we can't get a good clue. And maddening for the customer - we have to call them and ask them to send a tech guy out to reboot.

One of the guys who's been here a much longer time than me has told me that it's curious - pcAnywhere is a pretty solid product that the company has used for years. This particular project puts it into service on a daily basis, so it's not like in other instances, where it got used only intermittently. Maybe the more it's used the higher the likelihood of a spontaneous failure? Or, he thinks it may be nothing wrong with pcAnywhere at all, that there is something in trouble at a lower level in Windows or TAPI. That goes beyond my knowledge, I'm afraid.

Like I said, we have it deployed at several sites, all on dialups. In the last 6 months, and I wish I could say I had collected a detailed evidence trail, maybe 4 or 5 times I've seen the Host lose its ability to make a connection. Several times it has been because of a dialup session that lost itself and just never did work again until the computer was rebooted. We found a setting that ends a connection if there is a timeout of keyboard/mouse activity, and that probably helped once or twice. A couple of times I've seen it work one day and the next time it just wouldnt work - the latest was one of those.

Anyone know if there are known issues with a pcAnywhere Host just randomly, spontaneously becoming inoperative?

Thanks again
 
Originally posted by: Felecha
Actually, if I can ask further - the whole reason for this is that pcAnywhere has been just a little unreliable. That is maddening for us because we can't get a good clue. And maddening for the customer - we have to call them and ask them to send a tech guy out to reboot.

One of the guys who's been here a much longer time than me has told me that it's curious - pcAnywhere is a pretty solid product that the company has used for years. This particular project puts it into service on a daily basis, so it's not like in other instances, where it got used only intermittently. Maybe the more it's used the higher the likelihood of a spontaneous failure? Or, he thinks it may be nothing wrong with pcAnywhere at all, that there is something in trouble at a lower level in Windows or TAPI. That goes beyond my knowledge, I'm afraid.

Like I said, we have it deployed at several sites, all on dialups. In the last 6 months, and I wish I could say I had collected a detailed evidence trail, maybe 4 or 5 times I've seen the Host lose its ability to make a connection. Several times it has been because of a dialup session that lost itself and just never did work again until the computer was rebooted. We found a setting that ends a connection if there is a timeout of keyboard/mouse activity, and that probably helped once or twice. A couple of times I've seen it work one day and the next time it just wouldnt work - the latest was one of those.

Anyone know if there are known issues with a pcAnywhere Host just randomly, spontaneously becoming inoperative?

Thanks again
Click to expand...


I've had the misfortune of dealing with PCAnywhere for five years now with dialup connections. To say I hate that program with every fiber of my being would still be an understatement. I have nothing but problems with it like the ones you mentioned. On the worst occassions I have to dial into all of our forty odd locations and it can take forever because I have so many problems that have to be sorted out before I can do the actual work.

The only advantage I have is there are usually people on site that can reboot the sytems or follow my instructions.
 
Well, here's another twist to the situation. It has occurred to me that I could have BOTH pcAnywhere and UltraVNC running at the same time. Calling in over the dialup, I have not yet seen any problem with one interfering with the other. Both running as Services, both in the Systray, just whoever I choose to connect to goes to work for me.

My immediate boss (I'm the junior programmer, 1 year on the job, he's been at it for 25 years) who always loses me in describing underlying TAPI and Windows layers of this and that, is concerned that they would tangle with each other, since they both are involved in the same resources.

But it sure looks to me like a promising possibility - use the VNC since it really does seem to be faster, and keep pcAnywhere idling in the background in case we ever need it.

The big issue for us has been reliability, and this would seem to be very valuable - a redundant system.

Any ideas?

Again, thanks to all. This has been a BIG customer problem for us
 
I don't think they'll tangle. Different port, different protocol gets initiated.
PCanywhere won't run it's executables on a whim.
 
Can I get this one up again?

I downloaded and installed VNC over pcAnywhere (giggle) to one of our customer sites to test drive it. Installed it all, it's been running several days now. I left pcAnywhere running all the time, confident that it would not be a problem.

I'm really sure that at least once or twice the first day I accidentally, out of long habit, connected to the site with pcAnywhere, and said after a bit "Oh yes, I was going to be using VNC, wasn't I?". I can't prove that I did, since logging was not on for pcAnywhere at the time (damn!)

now today someone wanted to check something with pcAnywhere (someone who had not yet installed VNC as a client) and found it was unresponsive. The modem could be heard to connect, and then dead silence. We have a USR Courier V.Everything that has lights on the front that showed no send or receive after the initial connect (I presume there was some level of connect, the modem screedling stopped). Then it would time out and quit.

After much angst and discussion (this plan is being sold to the skeptics here on the team as - hey, they are OK on the same machine together, if one goes down the other can be used until the first one is fixed) and many efforts to connect, someone had the bright idea that maybe the Incoming Connection on the Host machine was catching pcAnywhere's calls and the pcA Host never gets asked to join in. So I had someone on site there today and got him to uncheck the modem box in Properties for the Incoming Connection, and sure enough I could connect to pcAnywhere again. Rechecked it and I could not, unchecked it again and I could.

So it really looks like something is tangled. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? I really hope so, I REALLY want to have both there and in service, it's been very bad not to be able to connect, and a redundant capability would be great.
 
You really should give VNC Scan (http://www.vncscan.com) a try. It deploys (push install) UltraVNC to computers on the network with the DSM encryption easily enabled.

It also beats out PC Anywhere in price (no per-computer pricing) and that it can reboot a remote computer into Safe Mode and then STILL use VNC to remote control it! I don't know of any other remote control app that does that. Do you??

PC anywhere is a monster that has been around for a long time but just looking at the $40 price tag of VNC Scan and all of the features that it has, this one has a bright future!
 
Originally posted by: sbostedor
You really should give VNC Scan (http://www.vncscan.com) a try. It deploys (push install) UltraVNC to computers on the network with the DSM encryption easily enabled.

It also beats out PC Anywhere in price (no per-computer pricing) and that it can reboot a remote computer into Safe Mode and then STILL use VNC to remote control it! I don't know of any other remote control app that does that. Do you??

PC anywhere is a monster that has been around for a long time but just looking at the $40 price tag of VNC Scan and all of the features that it has, this one has a bright future!
Click to expand...

Nice first post...
 
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