Questions about Remote Access
The situation I have is this - our local humane shelter has 4 computers all running Windows XP Pro SP3. They all connect to the same Netgear router and share files from the main computer. The Manager of the shelter is confined to a wheel chair at her house and needs remote access to all the shelter computers. She also has a computer with XP Pro SP3. Here are my questions -
Can we use Remote Desktop to accomplish this?
Will we be connecting to the main computer and then to the others from there?
Will I need to give the main computer a static IP address?
Thank you!
Robert
Can we use Remote Desktop to accomplish this?
Will we be connecting to the main computer and then to the others from there?
Will I need to give the main computer a static IP address?
Thank you!
Robert
What kind of environment is this? I'm assuming it's a Workgroup environment and not a domain environment.
Using a netgear router - it sounds like you are using NAT - with one WAN IP. As described above find out the external IP of each machine. Most likely you'll need to use Port forwarding so the router knows which machine to direct RDP traffic to.
Using a netgear router - it sounds like you are using NAT - with one WAN IP. As described above find out the external IP of each machine. Most likely you'll need to use Port forwarding so the router knows which machine to direct RDP traffic to.
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ASKER
If I understand it correctly Logmein would give access to one computer at the shelter. Are you suggesting that we could then access the other computers once establishing access to the main computer?
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You could do it either way. You could put Logmein on all the computers and give her access to each one via Logmein. Or you could put something like VNC on all the computers and she could access one with Logmein and then remote to other ones from the "main" computer. It's probably a better user experience to put Logmein on all of them and use that as the portal. VNC works great, but doing a remote session from a remote session, while totally workable, usually doesn't give the best end user experience.
ASKER
The next question would be cost. Since the Humane Shelter is completely non-profit and has limited funding we need a free solution. If she has access to multiple computers from her home computer won't we have to pay for that access?
Logmein has a free version and a paid version. The paid version offers additional features such as file transfer.
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What type of internet service does the shelter have? DSL, cable (xfinity or uverse), etc... Also, how many WAN ip's is the shelter paying for? This will determine the best course of action for remote access. If there is no 'budget' for this project I would suggest using dynamic dns with remote access.
ASKER
Right now they have a wireless signal coming into the building and then routed to each computer. There are plans to go to fiber optic. We are going to give logmein a shot. I will let you know how it goes.
yes, please update; from your post I supposed you all were looking for a long term free solution; I think logmein if free to try...
ASKER
We are trying logmein and there is a free version. I think it will do what we want.
What would probably work best is to set up one computer to be accessed remotely and then she can access the files on the other computers using a drive mapping. I suggest this because it is likely there is only a single address out to the internet.
If each shelter computer has a separate and distinct IP address then (test using whatsmyip.org) you can use dynamic dns to make each system accessible remotely.