Re: remote desktop question

["Scott C. Best" <sbest () best com>]

JordanPW:

        Heya. Apologies for the self-promotion here, but if all
you need is remote-desktop support for a collection of users, a
full-fledged VPN solution may be a bit excessive. Have you given
EchoVNC a try? It's a VNC-based remote desktop system that uses
a TCP relay (called an "echoServer", available for Windows and
Linux) to enable "firewall-friendly" remote desktop connections.
It uses OpenSSL to encrypt the data sessions, and we recently
added NTLM web proxy support as well: "http://www.echovnc.com";.
Everything is open-source except for the echoServer, which is
"try-before-buy" shareware.

cheers,
Scott

> > Dear All,
> >
> > The company I work with recently required a remote desktop access and to
> > keep the budget down, I used a XP Pro system to receive only one Remote
> > Desktop user.
> >
> > Since this requires the opening up of a port on the firewall, I'm quite
> > concerned.  I have limited the system to only one or
> > two users who can log on.   Since this is my initial foray
> > into the remote desktop client (in the past, we used PCAnywhere, but
> > it's getting more and more expensive(hard to justify purchasing a
> > license for each system).
> >
> > In what ways can I protect the remote desktop system from
> > being broken into?  (Well, aside from shutting it down.)
> >
> > Any pointers appreciated.
> >
> > Edmund
> I see this advice often on this list.  I work with very small businesses (200 
> users and below) where number of servers / firewalls / routers, and budgets 
> for same, are very small.  So I have some (very basic I'm afraid) questions 
> on this subject:
> -- Is there not a slowness / performance hit when forcing users to access a 
> Terminal Server via a VPN connection?
> -- This will require VPN client software on all client machines right?  Or is 
> the in-built MS VPN connection stuff considered acceptably secure in this 
> scenario?
> -- Or should we look at SSL VPN for this? 
> Thanks in advance for any feedback ...