Recommendations for Remote Access System

[Andrew Meyer]

I have been asked, as part of my duties at work, to come up with a solution for remote access to the machines we ship to our customers.

I thought it might be useful to get the experiences of the i3 hive mind; likes and dislikes, recommendations or anti-recommendations.

The use case we have is to log into a Windows 7 machine, generally in a different state, to perform diagnostics on the machine vision system it is running. These diagnostics involve remote control of the desktop (including power cycle), occasional file transfer, and preferably the ability to allow a local user simultaneous access to the desktop (built in chat is nice, but we have also just used Notepad in the past).

Lower bandwidth systems are preferred, since many manufacturing plants use shoestring and barbed wire for their internet connections. Compression or intelligent pixel transfer, or both, are acceptable. End to end encryption is required.

Our customer will give us whatever resources we need, in terms of open ports or firewall exceptions.

The cheaper the software, the better, but ease of use, security, and stability are more important than cost.

Any suggestions?

[Dave McMillan]

    I was generally quite happy with TeamViewer, until my employer instituted a "no cloud services for anything" rule.  Encrypted, generally not too hard on bandwidth, and includes remote control and chat.  I have it on most of my relatives' computers for remote maintenance purposes, with the options for "local user must ok any remote access session" just for the extra layer of security.  I've never heard of a system that has "unilateral" remote access enabled being intruded upon, but why take the chance?

    LogeMeIn wasn't bad, although I found TV to be much more to my taste.

    In a real pinch, I've made do with WebEx or GoToMeeting, as long as there was someone on the other end to hand over screen and keyboard/mouse control.

    I've never liked RDP, much preferring VNC, though I've used both.  But unless you're on the same LAN together, there are obvious issues with using either, not to mention they're both on the "sniff list" for any botnet probing for security holes.  On occasion in the past, to access machines that had no direct internet access, I've actually had someone on-site VNC/RDP into the machine over the LAN (usually from a laptop carried out to the shop floor), and then give me remote access to the laptop via TV/etc (often over a cell phone connection, just to ice the cake).  Janky as heck, but I've made it work for applications with low graphics intensity.

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