Convenient graphical remote control

Remotely Controlled

Article from ADMIN 01/2010

By Daniel Kottmair

Teamviewer is an impressive demonstration of how easy remote control across routers and firewalls can be. The popular software is now available for Linux.

Some 60 million users already have the Teamviewer [1] commercial remote control solution running on Windows and Mac OS X. Because of the many requests from customers, Teamviewer's manufacturer now provides a variant for Linux in version 5. Teamviewer facilitates remote access to other computers across a network. The only requirement is that the machine at the other end is also running Teamviewer. Teamviewer provides all this functionality in a standalone program; special client or server versions are not available.

Teamviewer automatically generates a globally unique ID on each machine. When it is launched, Teamviewer generates a new password that the computer on the opposite end of the connection can use to access the local machine. This scheme prevents anybody who has ever logged in to that machine from doing so again without the owner's authorization. You can keep the newly generated password or define one yourself.

Connections

Remote access without port forwarding works across routers and firewalls thanks to one of the globally distributed Teamviewer servers on the web, which initiates a 256-bit encrypted UDP connection between the two parties. If a proxy server or a firewall with content filtering makes this connection impossible, the transfer is handled directly by the Teamviewer server. The HTTP label in the window header, rather than the UDP label, identifies this kind of connection. If you are worried about using a third-party server, Teamviewer will sell you your own authentication server on request.

Teamviewer will even let you remotely control computers that only have a modem connection. The software vendor improved compression in version 5 to reduce the amount of data crossing the wire. Video, Flash banners, and other applications that permanently change screen content

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