Remote Support
February 22nd, 2006 by Marcus TettmarI’ve been evaluating various remote support solutions lately. For a while we’ve been using a reverse VNC system, which is free, and works well for the most part. Being a reverse connection there are usually no firewall issues, since the customer adds us as a listening viewer and therefore the connection is from inside out, rather than outside in. However, some very strict firewall policies do actually prevent VNC traffic in either direction. So we have had to seek alternatives.
One of the most well known desktop sharing solutions is WebEx, but at prices starting from $149/month it’s not cheap! Other solutions such as Citrix’s GotoMeeting are more reasonable at $49/month. Another I’ve tried is LogMeIn which costs $99/month and seemed a bit complicated to set up and use. So I’ve been on the lookout for something more affordable and workable.
Well I’ve just discovered BeamYourScreen.com which starts at $19 a month (for a one:one connection - all you need for remote support) and there’s 25% discount to be had for a 2 year subscription. Seems like very good value. I’m currently evaluating it and it seems to work really well. The system is web and Java based so as long as java applets are permitted it should work and shouldn’t suffer the same security issues that VNC often does.
I found BeamYourScreen really easy to set up and use too. Once I had created an account and installed it all I had to do to start a session was click on the system tray icon. That gives me a session URL to give to a guest and a link to send it by email. The guest simply visits that URL and gets connected. Very simple. I’m running a seven day trial at the moment so we’ll see how it goes, but so far, I think this could be the one. If anyone wants to try it out, and get some free remote Macro Scheduler support at the time, let me know 
February 27th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Hi,
how about Dameware Remote Control
http://www.dameware.com 89,– for one user license.
But here userlicense mean:
1 user can control an unlimited amount of machines. The liecense include 1 user and unlimeted hosts.
There is also a function “connect to client” which is also a connection from inside out.
What can i say more?
February 27th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Thanks Matthias, but Dameware Remote Control suffers the same issues as VNC. This kind of software is awesome for organisations where you have control of all the machines you ever want to remotely administer, and also great where the other party is in full control of their network. But the software needs to be installed at both ends and a specific port needs to be opened up on the firewall.
The problem for remote support scenarios that we have is that the user we are helping could be inside a corporate network. The user may not have admin privileges and no control over the company’s firewalls and routers. This kind of software would never work in these cases. Even an inside-out connection can be problematic as the firewall that needs to be used may be blocked. A way round that is to use port 80 or 443 which is always open but that also has infrastructure implications at our end.
The benefit of a service like BeamYourScreen is that it only uses ports 80 and 443, is routed through their infrastructure and only requires a small applet to be run from a web page for the user. The user just has to go to a URL and everything is taken care of.
Another interesting service is FogCreek CoPilot where they have wrapped VNC in their own installer and helper app and routed through their servers. Again, this avoids any firewall issues and simplifies the install process. However, they charge by the minute!
February 27th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
We too are faced with the same remote support issues.
But the literature on “BeamYourScreen” indicates that it is more of a training and demo tool rather then an easy remote control tool of a user’s pc.
June 1st, 2006 at 10:04 am
Sorry for missing your comments from so long ago! I had forgotten I had set comments to moderate only and had not been checking the moderation panel!
BeamYourScreen works both as a training/demo/conferencing tool as well as a remote support tool. When a session is started the person who started it (us in our case) is the presenter and the user sees our screen. But we can then switch presenters to any other user. So in our case the first thing we do is switch control to the user. The user has to OK this. We then see the user’s screen and they are in control. We can then request remote control and the user has to OK that too. So we now have control of the user’s screen. IMO the nice thing about this approach is that the user is always in control and I believe that gives them confidence. It is also useful if we just want to show someone how something works and run through something on our system. It is easy to switch “presenters”.
We have a 1:1 license so we can’t use it for sales demos or conferences with more than one person. But this suits us as we only need it for 1:1 support.
We have used it many times now and have found it works very well. For the price it is great value for money. We have only had one situation where the user was unable to connect.