PCbanter - View Single Post - Do all remote-desktop utilities use/need a remote server?

**Philip Herlihy**

In article , says...

Looking at (free) alternatives to TeamViewer. So far have found Distant
Desktop (10-11 MB, just runs), AnyDesk Free (~3.7 MB, runs), NoMachine
(34 MB!, installs), and others.

Do they _all_ require access to a remote server, *including for initial
setup of the connection*, or do any of them work entirely standalone?
(I'm not talking of machines on the same LAN, but helping a friend
hundreds of miles away [with no VPN or similar].)

Presumably if they need a remote server, even if only to start the
connection, the free versions could stop working at any time. (And the
commercial ones, of course, but they're mostly only limited-time anyway
unless you keep paying, i. e. they're monthly [in some cases yearly
really] not outright.)

The reason these solutions use an intermediate server is because firewalls
normally block incoming connections - with a server, both ends make outgoing
connections.

If you want to be able to connect to remote machines without user intervention
at the far end (so you can't simply use Quick Assist, which is built-in) then
you need to open a port at the far end. In the case of VNC (e.g free UVNC) the
port is 5900, but you can normally get a router to translate an arbitrary (less
obvious) port on the fly when you set up the routing. If you could get someone
(anyone) at the far end to set up a Quick Assist connection, you can connect to
their router and set up the port forwarding, and install the UVNC server needed
on their machine.

An alternative is to open port 5500 at your end, and get them to open a new
'client' connection (to your 'listening' client). That can be done with a
clickable cmd file. But, like Quick Assist, that does require user action at
the far end.

--

Phil, London