How to Use Remote Desktop to
Access Multiple Computers on LAN
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What are Ports and How Do They Work? Computers have different ports that are assigned specific numbers. These ports allow information into and out of the computer. For instance, port 80 is used by the web, while port 23 is used by FTP programs. Firewalls block information from accessing the ports on a computer unless the firewall is specifically told to allow something through. For this reason, we need to be able to setup each remotely accessed computer with a separate port and tell the firewall which computer is using each port. Remote Desktop Ports Windows Remote Desktop uses port 3389 to send and receive data. So the first computer being accessed remotely will be assigned this port to use for Remote Desktop. While the other computers in the local area network will be assigned sequential numbers starting with 3390. So, the second computer would be given port 3390, the third would use port 3391 and so on. Follow the directions below to change the listening port for Remote Desktop and each computer you wish to access remotely. 1) Click on Start, Run 2) Type REGEDIT and press Enter 3) Click on the plus signs (+) next to the following sections in the Registry Editor
5) Double-click on the name PortNumber 6) Choose the Decimal option under Base and type the correct port number using the information above. 7) Click OK 8) Close the Registry Editor 9) Repeat this procedure on each computer you wish to access remotely along with the steps involved in setting each computer up to use Remote Desktop. Changing the Firewall to Allow Access Now that each computer is assigned a unique port to use for Remote Desktop, you'll have to tell the firewall running on each computer to allow that port through. Follow these steps to change the Windows Firewall to allow access. 1) In the Control Panel, click on the option for Security Center 2) Click on Windows Firewall under the heading 'Manage Security Settings For' 3) Verify Windows Firewall is turned on 4) Click on the Exceptions tab 5) Click on the Add Port button 6) In the Name field, type REMOTE DESKTOP 2 7) In the Port field, type the port you assigned to the computer in the previous section: 3389, 3390, etc. 8) Choose TCP as the protocol and Click OK 9) Verify that there is a checkmark for the option REMOTE DESKTOP 2 and Click OK Changing Your Router to Allow Access Lastly, you'll need to make a change in your router for each computer you want to access. This change is called Port Forwarding and a friend of mine has created a great site called PortForward.com to explain how to do this. Depending on your router the procedure is slightly different, however there are great tutorials on portforward.com to explain this. Each computer you want to access must have its own static ip address on your network. There are two steps involved in setting a static IP address for each computer: discover your current ip address and assign the current ip address to your computer. Discover the Current IP Address on your computer 1) Click on Start, Run 2) Type CMD and press Enter 3) At the blinking cursor, type IPCONFIG /ALL and press Enter (remember there is a space between IPCONFIG and /ALL) 4) Find the section for the Connected Ethernet Adapter and write down the following information
Assign the Current IP Address to Your Computer as a Static IP 1) Click on Start, Control Panel 2) In Classic View: Open Network Connections In Category View: Select Network and Internet Connections, then click on Network Connections 3) Right-click on your active LAN or Internet connection 4) Click on Properties 5) In the General tab, highlight Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click Properties 6) Under the General tab, click Use the following IP Address and enter the information you wrote down in the previous section for this computer including
8) Click OK and then click OK again to leave the Network Settings section 9) Restart your computer 10) Follow the procedure above to check your current IP address and verify its the same as before 11) Finally, test the connection and make sure you can access the Internet. Port Forward the Remote Desktop Port Now you are ready to modify your router to port forward the remote desktop port number to the correct computer. Use the tutorials on PortForward.com to make changes to your router. Although the specific information will be different for your situation, you'll forward the port you assigned for Remote Desktop to the static IP address you assigned for that particular computer. If you have three computers you are trying to reach with Remote Desktop, then you'll have three entries in the port forward section of your router to accomplish this. Also, its best if your internet connection to your LAN is assigned a static IP by your ISP. If you dont have a static IP, you will find it harder to connect because your IP will change each time your router is rebooted. To discover your current LAN IP, go to the website WhatIsMyIP.COM and it will show you your current IP. As an alternative, you can sign up for a free Dynamic DNS account to track your IP and be able to access your network. You can sign up for DynDNS by visiting their site at http://www.dyndns.com Using the Remote Desktop Connection to Connect to Each Computer Now, you can test the remote desktop connections from another location. 1) On your laptop or another computer not connected to your LAN, open the Remote Desktop Connection software under Accessories and Communications 2) On the Remote Desktop screen type the IP of the network you want to connect to followed by a colon and the port number you wish to connect to. Example: 215.76.43.5:3390 3) Finally click connect and see if you can reach your computer. If the connection is successful, you will be presented with the login screen for your computer, type your username and password and click Ok to access your computer. 4) Test this connection for each computer you wish to connect to behind your local area network. NOTE: You'll have to log into an account on your computer has been assigned a password. If you don't have a password assigned, you'll need to assign one before using Remote Desktop to connect. Written by Mark Hasting
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Helping people with computers.. one answer at a time.
I'll look at a couple of ways to back up to a computer located elsewhere, such as on a friend's or family member's computer, and discuss some of the issues of doing this.
by Leo A. Notenboom, © 2011
I am trying to find a way to backup my computer automatically to a hard drive at another physical location (my parent's house). Is there a way to do this?
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This is a pretty interesting scenario, and one that I personally used forsome time while my wife had a retail business at a different location from myhome. I would regularly backup in both directions - simultaneously achieving'off-site' backups for each.
But there were, and still are, limitations.
Today, there are a couple of approaches to peer-to-peer backup; I'll coverthe most appropriate.
There are also a couple of things that people often think should work, andwould work in concept, but they simply can't work for practical considerations.
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Peer-to-Peer Backup
Do not confuse this kind of backing up with peer-to-peer file sharing, which we've heard so much about. This is completelyunrelated, except for the concept of 'peer'.
A peer is simply 'someone like you'. A co-worker at the same level as youis your peer. A student in the same class is your peer.
We use the same terminology when it comes to computers - two computersconnected on a network that have no hierarchical relationship to them - one isnot a server, for example - can be considered to be peers: on equal footingand with equal permissions and capabilities.
Peer-to-peer backup simply means that we take two computers and back upfiles from the first to the second and the second to the first.
While the two computers don't need to be in different locations from eachother, we'll say that they are for the purposes of this discussion; by doing it this way, you'll get an off-site backup. Saved in a different location, this backup protects your data from things like your house burning down and destroying all your local machines and local backups.
Backing Up Your Data Versus Your Computer
We first need to rule out image backups, or backups of your entirecomputer. It's not that the techniques which we're talking about wouldn't work, theywould. Perhaps even someday, they'll be practical, but today, they are not.
The problem is the speed of your internet connection and the sheer volume of data that you'd need to transfer to backup your entire system.
According to Akami,the average connection speed in the US is now 3.6 megabits persecond.
Now, let's say you had 20 gigabytes used on your system, which is small, by today's standards. (Recall that a byte is 8 bits.)
Screens 4 4 1 – Access Your Computer Remotely Backup Sync
Math then tells us that it would take over 12 hours to back up your entiremachine under ideal circumstances.
Given that circumstances are rarely ideal, that many people havesignificantly less than a 3.6-megabit connection, and that most havesignificantly more than 20 gigabytes on their system, you can see that a fullsystem backup would take days.
The result is that peer-to-peer backups are not suitable for full systembackups.
On the other hand, they're great for data backups - the backups of only the data fileson your machine - which typically don't add up to nearly as much.
Dropbox
I've talked about Dropbox before, but only in the context of sharing files with friends associated or simply across multiple machines.
But the same technology is also a great peer-to-peer backup solution.
When you install Dropbox and create a Dropbox account, it creates a folderwhich is then shared with all of the machines logged into that same Dropbox account.Update a file on machine A and it's magically updated on machine B whether that machine is across the room or the planet.
Sounds kinda like peer-to-peer backups, right?
You can also use it to share sub-folders with other specific Dropbox users.That way, you can use Dropbox for yourself, but also specify that a particular folderin your Dropbox (perhaps called 'remote-backup') should be shared with your friend'sDropbox account. The same thing happens: updates within machine A's remote-backup folder are magically transferred to the remote-backup folder on your friend's machine (or vice versa) without anything more than an internet connection and making sure Dropbox is running on both machines.
The files are also stored on the Dropbox servers, so even if you don't electto share with a friend, you've got an off-site backup just by using the tool.
Caveat: pick a friend you can trust to use Dropbox with forpeer-to-peer sharing. They can see your Dropbox-shared files and you can seetheirs. Files are encrypted on the Dropbox server, so no one but the accounts which youauthorize can access them.
Dropbox is one example; perhaps the most popular. There are similar,competing services as well. Windows Live Mesh and SugarSync are twoexamples.
001f‹00030003CrashPlan
CrashPlan isbackup software that, as one of its features, allows you to use a friend'sremote computer as your backup storage location.
How To Access Your Computer Remotely
The beauty of this approach is that it's much more like backup software andcan be configured and controlled more like backup software.
The free version allows only peer-to-peer backup with no storage provided byCrashPlan itself. It appears to be ad supported and does not offer 'continuousupdate'. Paid versions of the product offer these features and more.
Unlike the Dropbox approach, your data is encrypted before it leaves yourmachine, meaning that the friend who's been nice enough to allow you to backupto his machine elsewhere cannot see your data.
Disclaimer: I've not used CrashPlan, so this isn't really arecommendation. However, it is the only online backup service which I've foundthat has the very feature that you're asking for as part of its offering. Make sureto carefully evaluate this, or any product or service that you plan to use forbacking up.
Online Services in General
If all that you're looking for is an off-site backup, you don't need the data to bestored on a friend's machine, and you can live with the assorted costs and/or limitations of the various services, then any of the general-purpose online backup services may well be worth looking into. Names like Carbonite, Mozy, Jungle Disk and others are examples.
Roll Your Own
For completeness, I'll throw this out as well.
Particularly because it's what I did.
While my wife had her business, my off-site solution consisted of twoapproaches: Scherlokk 3 5 – find and compare files google drive.
I used a Hamachi VPN to connect the two machines over the internet, and thensimply had batch files or scripts that copied files back and forth asappropriate. This backed up the most critical data nightly.
Each location had an external hard drive on to which more extensive, nightly local backups were placed. Periodically, we would physically swap the twodrives as we traveled to and from the business.
The disk swap might not be seamlessly automatic, but it was quitepractical.
Article C4802 - April 23, 2011 «»
You may also be interested in:
Can I do my backups over the internet? Backing up to a service or server across the internet can be a useful part of a larger backup strategy, but the technique does have important limits.
Is an online backup service a good idea? Backing up data using an online backup service is lucrative, and can be an important part of an overall strategy - within limits.
What backup program should I use? Backing up your computer's data is critical. What program should you use? There are many, but the best is which ever one you actually will use.
April 24, 2011 11:25 AM
The security of Dropbox hosted files is apparently poor, employees of the company are able to decrypt your files. The other Leo (Laporte) suggested wuala.com which competes with Dropbox but claims to be unable to decrypt your files on their servers. He hadn't actually used it however.
The Security Now podcast from April 20, 2011 described a security flaw in the Dropbox software. Apparently, copying a single file is all that's needed for a bad guy to impersonate you with Dropbox. Even if you change your Dropbox password, the bad guy with that critical file is still you, as far as Dropbox is concerned.
As for the common offsite backup providers, there is a hidden gotcha with some of them. I blogged about this here
Why your backups may disappear
http://blogs.computerworld.com/17832/why_your_backups_may_disappear
In brief, they do replication rather than backup. Thus, if you accidentally delete a file on your computer, many providers will delete the backup of that file.
There is also another option: you can roll your own VPN. Windows XP Professional and some versions of Windows 7 (not sure which) are able to act as a VPN server. Probably Vista can do it too, not sure. Also not sure about Macs.
The upside is that by acting as your own VPN server, no extra software needs to be installed and thus no trust needs to be placed in any third party. And, its free forever. The downside is that its a bit techie to set up.
Finally, yet another option: sibling NAS boxes. Some (many?) Network Attached Storage devices are able to replicate the data they hold to another NAS box. They do incremental backups using rsync. Thus, its best to fully mirror the two boxes initially. Offsite replication can even be scheduled for off-hours. I haven't tried this yet, but would love to some day. Its a bit pricey however.
April 26, 2011 10:27 AM
While online backup using these methods sounds good in theory, there is one overriding disadvantage that is rarely mentioned: ISP Data Caps. If your service provider limits your data transfer to, say 250GB per month (cough..Comcast..cough), and your normal usage accounts for say, 100GB per month, then your new online backup system would be limited to a transfer of 150GB per month. It sounds like a lot, but it's not. Given the potentially draconian penalties for exceeding the data cap, online backups are rarely practical.
Steve ClarkApril 26, 2011 3:13 PM
For those, like me, with over 200 GB of data to backup, Crash plan offers (for a reasonable fee) a 'seeded backup' service. They send you a hardrive, you backup to it, then return to them, they upload it to your online backup, all encrypted. Then your system can start maintaining that backup with just files that change or are added. Gets you immediate backup protection and saves all that data upload time. They will also overnight a drive back to you if you need to restore your system and don't want to wait for all that download time. They have the most options for data backup I have found. I have mine set to backup to a local eSATA drive and online to CrashPlan. I have used it to recover data after a hard drive crash. There is no option to do a full system backup or image backup. The user interface is a bit too simplified and not exactly well documented - that's my only complaint. Their tech support is pretty quick and helpful. I now subscribe to their family plan, backup as many as 10 computers, no data limit, no data transfer rate throttling either. And back to the article, it does support backing up to any other computer, whether its your own or a friend's. After many many years looking for the 'right' backup solution, this is the best so far. I am a realist though and I would be surprised if Crashplan doesn't let me down somehow in the future, but so far so good!
Mark JApril 28, 2011 11:43 AM
Teamviewer.com is a very good piece of software to connect computers over the Internet. It is expensive ($500) for professional use but it is totally free for non commercial use. Of course, you have to trust each other to give each other access to each other's computers.
Screens 4 4 1 – Access Your Computer Remotely Backup Password
Robin ClayMay 1, 2011 11:48 AM
Mark Draa wrote, April 26, 2011 10:27 AM :-
While online backup using these methods sounds good in theory, there is one overriding disadvantage that is rarely mentioned: ISP Data Caps.
In the 'Good Old Days' before the Internet became so universal, I used 'Fido', and also I used what might be called 'Fido technology' to transfer files 'direct' (i.e. without any InterNet/ISP etc.) to another computer via dial-up modem. I once (circa 1994) did this from a computer in Turkey to another in the UK.
Perhaps this might still be a viable method ?
Can one 'dial-up' using the Internet telephone system ? If so, how ?
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