[Q] The current state of RDP (Remote Desktop) applications - Windows Phone 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi,
I think there are 2 true RDP applications on the WP7 marketplace at the moment. Both are very expensive. My concern is that they're both proxying the RDP session somehow - has anyone tested these apps and checked the traffic?
How would RDP be done in Silverlight?

I cannot use these because of two reasons:
1) I cannot buy them (living in an unsupported country), but if I could, I still wouldn´t (see below).
2) they are using gateways for RDP protocol, and I´m sorry, I am not giving away my data (potential credentials to my servers and PCs) at any chance.
My problem is the security concern, you can only see the traffic going out and into device, but are they storing anything? And if they do, do you think they would tell you? Sorry, not for me.
Mango is bringing sockets support, so RDP apps will also come, I will wait for these (because checking traffic on these will be much easier and much more clear - by eliminating the gateway/proxy that is currently used).
Just my 0.02c

Related

Windows Mobile - How secure is it?

Hello everyone,
I am an IT-student in Germany working on my bachelor thesis. The topic is about securing end devices in a corporate environment. Since the company deployed the '07 version of Exchange Server, ActiveSync and PushMail are available. Also there is a plan to introduce WinMo-based phones.
As far as I am aware of, I can mainly manage WinMo devices through the polices on the Exchange server. I can enforce password protecting (which I wish to do) and prohibed features like bluetooth, wifi or camera.
My question is now, how secure are the devices?
Password Protection
Are there any pulbic documents available describing how it works? Is there a way to circumvent? (I do not want a guide, how to do it!!!) Is the recovery mechanism provided by Exchange adequate secured?
Storage Card Encryption
There is the possibility to enforce encryption of storage cards. Are there details about the used algorithm available? Does a desaster recovery mechanism exist?
Third party applications
Can I manage, what applications can be installed on a mobile device?
I am looking forward to an interesting discussion with you.

Remote desktop software

Hey guys, Does anyone know if there's any decent FREE apps for the android that i can use for remote assistance? i work in IT and this would be very useful to me but im not willing to fork out cash just yet.
I know you can use VNC but this means installing software on client machines and setting that software upm which is no use to me.
thanks in advance guys
I have tried most and there are no good free RDC clients. (I started to write one myself but it was not very fun so I abandoned it.)
I would suggest biting the bullet and buying xtralogic's Remote Desktop client. At $19.95 it is the most expensive option but the controls on it are the best IMHO.
If you want cheaper ($7.98) there is Remote RDP by Walter Yongtao Wang but i find the controls are not as intuitive.
I know you said you do not want to fork out cash yet but the reality is if you want a good RDC client then for now you are going to have to pay for it. In the grand scheme of things $20 is a minor investment for the aggravation saved.
PhoneMyPC is the best one I've tried and I've played with almost all of them. Multitouch zooming makes it closest to what logmein ignition is on the iPhone. I think until logmein comes out with an Android app, it's the best bet even though it costs a few dollars.
yeah , i also use PhoneMyPC , works great , no problems
I have to agree. PhoneMyPC is extremely (surprizingly) fast and worked better than the RDP or VNC solutions from my testing.
I was very skeptical that it could perform well, but... call me a believer now.
Thanks for the answers guys, I'll try PhoneMyPc out first.
One more question, I would also like to Wake computers via LAN, Do these software's have the ability to send the "magic" WOL packets to wake a system up?
This is another feature i would find extremely useful.
Clearly my brain was not working last night. I misread what you were asking for. PhoneMyPC is nice but requires a client install.
If your goal is end client support and you do not want to require them to install an application you might consider UltraVNC single click for the client ( http://www.uvnc.com/addons/singleclick.html )+ a VNC viewer on android. While it will not perform as well as PhoneMyPC it has the benefit of being a zero foot print solution and works well in situations where the client may not want/be able to install applications on their system. I keep a build on my website and if a situation pops up that requires me to access the end user's machine have them download and run it.
Your request for WOL is a bit confusing though, which implies you are not going for end user support. What are you looking for:
- a solution to connect to your personal machine running in the same subnet as your phone
- a solution to connect to your personal machine from wherever you may be at
- a solution to connect to remote end users machines with a pre-installed application
- a solution to connect to remote end users machines without a pre-installed application
- something else.
WOL can be triggered remotely (with preparation) but regardless requires the machine to be set up properly and that you know the MAC address in advance, not likely in a remote end user scenario.
Does anyone know where can I get the PhoneMyPC installation file for the phone? I couldn't find any download link on their site.
On the market. search for "phonemypc". It is a commercial app (9.99 USD) so that is pretty much your only way to get it.
Trust me on this one, go with Remote Desktop Client from xtralogic.. I've been using it for nearly a year.. its the best RDP you will find, no client install needed.
PhoneMyPC is the BEST!
Wait... we're biased ;-)
I suspect the user base here is savvy enough to know much of this, but a few details for anybody who's interested.
PhoneMyPC uses a technology similar to VNC, but it's custom and generally performs better. It is a bandwidth-limited approach to remoting, and we chose this because (a) we wanted something that made no compromises on visual quality (no missing desktop wallpapers, no changed settings, no missing themes), and we see the trend in available bandwidth going steadily up for the forseeable future. This makes PhoneMyPC a good option for remote video, for example, because it is optimized for pictoral data rather than vector data.
RDP, on the other hand, is optimized for vector data, so typically consumed less bandwidth than PhoneMyPC, but much more CPU resources. It also has the advantage that it is built in to all Professional and Server Windows versions.
The biggest difference between the two however is how they handle the network. With RDP you must know and configure your IP, and you must update it when it changes (or use a DynDNS type solution). You must also know how to configure your router and other security mechanisms for port forwarding.
PhoneMyPC just works, because it uses our servers as a connection point between your phone and PC(s). You don't need to know your IP, or worry if it changes, becuase the PC will actually tell the phone what it's IP is every time you connect. You can use port forwarding to get a better, direct connection, but it is not required for the software to work.
Finally, RDP is a long-lasting, well established (and more or less un-changing) technology; that is an advantage from some perspectives. But if you compare what users are saying PhoneMyPC is at least as good, and it's new, still growing, always getting better, and we're not even close to done yet. That too is an advantage from some perspectives.
SoftwareForMe.com
Makers of PhoneMyPC
I've bought all of them, and I could never get Phone My PC to connect. RDC by xtralogic, Remote VNC Pro Android VNC work great (used with TightVNC).
EDIT: Any suggestions Softwareforme? Also constant f/c's when connected via wifi on N1.

[Q] New Remote Desktop App

I tried to test out the new Remote Desktop application in the marketplace. There weren't any reviews so I download the trial. It wouldn't connect to any my computers, and ended up throwing an exception then running out of time on the trial.
Anyone else have better luck? I really want an app that works with Windows' RDP without having to install any other software. It would be awesome to get Jaadu or something with that quality on WP7. I've used it on iOS and its a fantastic client.
Hey I just tried it out, but im not sure what the hell I am doing and what developer doesn't include a "How to" in the app?
Any knows how to use this windows 7 feature? I do have w7 pro...
I got the app to connect to my Windows 7 desktop at home so it does work.
I don't know how this app works exactly but there's no way it's doing a direct connection to your workstation or server because the WP7 SDK doesn't support sockets. It must be going through a proxy of some sort which may be a security concern.
The real RDP clients will come when Mango is released and sockets are supported. Until then there will only be proxy based clients found on the marketplace.
If you are desperate for a RDP client this one seems to work ok.
The first real RDP app!
I tried the app yesterday. It worked perfectly at the first try. I really need such an app.
Sadly after purchasing it, it did not work at all. But surprisingly sometime later it was alright again. According to the exceptions that were thrown it has to do with the proxy-server that tunnels the tcp requests over http.
The server seems to be a bit unstable but I guess they will improve it sooner or later.
So I think if you need a real RDP client for now just use it – it’s really working well as long as the proxy is up! It is definitely the best and fastest one on the marketplace. Of course under a security-point of view an app that connects directly would be much nicer (I think they will change it as soon as mango it out). On the other hand if it would connect directly how could you now that it is not also sending your passwords elsewhere (if you are not going to sniff the network traffic…)?
There are only some minor things which could be better:
- Ask for permission to run under lock only once - not on every startup!
- Pinch to zoom to be able to click with more precision.
- Better behavior for text-input. I sometimes can´t see what I´m typing.
But for a v1 version thumbs up from me!
waiting for real rdp protocol, that can be done only with socket support...

[Q] Existing simple bluetooth data relay application?

I'm looking for Android Bluetooth / TCP/IP relay application.
-- Details --
I'm looking for RDP client which would be able to relay / bridge Bluetooth devices / peripherals to the RDP host (Windows server 2008 R2).
If there's no such RDP client, wehave a secondary option. Having separate background service which takes care of the data relaying part in background, and leaves the RDP connection / device display to foreground as completely separate process.
I've been planning developing such application. But if possible, I want to avoid re-inventing the wheel. Even if it sounds really simple, I'm sure there will be (too?) many problems before it works reliably.
I'm very curious to know, if such application already exists and where would I get it. I'm quite sure that someone has already made such an application. I just don't know where to look for it.
Additional bonus would come, if the application is quite easy to configure and if the sessions between RDP and this relay are easy to link and access on Windows server end.
As addition to the bluetooth relay, it would be nice to have a simple TCP/IP tunnel / bridge / relay feature in same packet. Allowing access to devices using TCP/IP without bluetooth using same app.
If it's true that such application doesn't exist. Would there be an market for such application if it's created? I could imagine I'm not the only person looking for such app.
I do have additional documentation & specification for there requirements, but I don't want to share it right here. I've been also discussion about this topic with a few Android Application developer companies, but as you might guess, this project won't be cheap. Therefore I'm looking for reasonably priced existing solution.
Here's simple use case sample. Customer is using industrial data collection solution where there are ten sensors attached to something being monitored which are then connected to tablet over bluetooth or wi-fi (TCP/IP). But the actual data processing / logging / control software is running on Windows server and can be accessed using RDP. Of course one solution would be using a full featured Windows laptop instead of that tablet, but we don't want to do that. So this expains what I'm looking for in more detail.
- Thank you
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KW: business, software development, android, thinclient, tablet, bluetooth, wifi, wlan, mobile
HTag: #android #peripheral #connectivity #remotedesktop #remotedesktopclient #softwaredevelopment #bluetooth #tablet #thinclient

Hamachi alternative for WinRT

Is there any alternative to Hamachi for WinRT (with the WinRT device being the client)..
Because RT doesn't run x86 apps, I need to VPN into a machine that sits behind a firewall with no port forwarding for RDP (remote desktop).
Therefore I want to run some VPN server on the machine so that the Surface RT can connect to the local LAN over the internet for an RDP session.
RT has the standard Windows VPN capabilities built in, I think (haven't actually tried). Third-party VPNs aren't supported without jailbreak, and won't be until Microsoft officially makes it available; WinRT apps simply do not have the permissions to create a network interface or re-route traffic (remember the days when Android VPN apps needed to be run as root? That's basically where RT still is).
Out of curiosity, if you can't forward the RDP port, why do you expect you'd be able to hit a VPN server behind the firewall? If it's just a matter of them specifically blocking port 3389, you can change the port that Terminal Services (RDP server) listens on in the registry.
You could try teamviewer, they can route the traffic through their servers so you don't need to forward a port to your pc in a firewall
hberntsen said:
You could try teamviewer, they can route the traffic through their servers so you don't need to forward a port to your pc in a firewall
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am planning to try that but was hoping there was also a service like Hamachi available ...
GoodDayToDie said:
RT has the standard Windows VPN capabilities built in, I think (haven't actually tried). Third-party VPNs aren't supported without jailbreak, and won't be until Microsoft officially makes it available; WinRT apps simply do not have the permissions to create a network interface or re-route traffic (remember the days when Android VPN apps needed to be run as root? That's basically where RT still is).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GoodDayToDie said:
Out of curiosity, if you can't forward the RDP port, why do you expect you'd be able to hit a VPN server behind the firewall? If it's just a matter of them specifically blocking port 3389, you can change the port that Terminal Services (RDP server) listens on in the registry.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Look up Hamachi and reread my OP
Fair point. You're not actually VPNing *into* your machine, but into a Hamachi-operated central management server. That has... interesting... security implications, but I suppose it does provide convenience (it would also be an immediate termination offense anywhere I've worked that had a firewall configuration like you describe, but that's your problem, not mine). Why can't you set up port forwarding in the firewall? Also, you did expressly state "Therefore I want to run some VPN server on the machine" where "the machine" presumably means the one behind the firewall...
The only time I've tried using Hamachi before was for "LAN" gaming over the 'net, which I decided not to do after looking at how it worked. That was long enough ago I'd forgotten the details of how it worked.
My first post still stands. There are at least two things Hamachi (or similar) would need to do that are impossible for a WinRT app (or for any software on RT without a jailbreak, really): create a network interface (we haven't even managed that *with* jailbreak, because except in the case of the semi-official driver from Pluggable we don't have any NDIS6 driver we can compile for ARM) and control a network interface from an app (there are possibly some rather hacky ways this could be done, but nothing we have right now).
Good Thank you:fingers-crossed:
Maybe someone will port Zerotier? It's too complicated for me, please help me make my life little easier

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