Forum Moderators: phranque
Just need to help my kiddo with her computer problems while she is away at college.
Anyone had any direct experience trying to do this same thing, where you have to log onto a PC remotely that resides on a college network?
I've been using it for years and really, really like it.
OF course if she's using XP you can turn on the free, built-in Terminal Services.
It's doubtful the college network will allow the ports that some of these things require to be forwarded to the pc in question.
Pc anywhere wouldn't work, nor would any other remote access program that requires port forwarding of any type, unless the college network admins are totally incompetent of course.
There may be a way around it, can't remember the technology, but nothing standard would work I think, maybe vpn as you say if done correctly.
PC Anywhere can use a "dial up".
Is that the secret to doing this?
Do any of the other products mentioned work via dial up, rather than trying to go through the networks?
Actually, and it's gonna be a tad hard to do, ya need to let her figure out that every college student needs to develop a new friendship with a student who is very much a techie. It's just another mini lesson on the adulthood highway that as much as we may wanna, we canna always be there for them post secondary school.
Every college student, male or female, needs a techie friend and a musician friend to pal around with while wearing a great pair of kicker shoes, an old pair of perfectly comfortable no matter how ratty blue jeans, preferably with a tad bit of pizza money in the pocket.
Very wise statements and I have been telling her that for a good while.
I just need to get her past some humps until she can find that college geek friend.
Is that the secret to doing this?
It may be. With network security, it'll be hard to get an inbound network connection. PCAnywhere is the best dialup product that I know of ...
GoToMyPC should work too, but the monthly fee will cost much more than a copy of PCAnywhere, even just for 1 year.
Turns out that 4specs may get the vote
http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/ PCAnywhere is probably slicker, but this is free.
because the university computer support guys like and use VNC! Of course they use it inside the university firewall so there may still be some issues.
The VNC site mentions "dial-up", but I can't find any documentation or confirmation on their site that convinces me they support it. Any comments on this?
That's why it isn't even mentioned I'd guess, it's just not practical.
For internal networks I use VNC variants. My current favorite is Ultr@VNC. It has finally reached version 1.0 and it's quite stable. The only problem I've encountered is getting through some of the stricter firewalls.
A third alternative that hasn't been mentioned here is the Windows XP Remote Desktop. This is built in to WinXP so there's no cost involved. Given the right network conditions it's a very stable platform. It all depends on the school's network.
