Network Advisor: Remote access

by Roger Gann

June 28, 2006 —

One of my favorite network admin time-savers is without doubt RDC (Remote Desktop Connection). This simple utility lets you remotely access a Windows system over a network or the web, provided it is set up to do so and you have proper access.

You open a connection to the PC and then view its virtual desktop. From here, you can access the remote computer as if it were your own: the desktop, client drives, audio sources, serial and parallel ports and printers. Even better, the local and remote computers share a clipboard, allowing data to be interchanged between applications.

So you can use it to monitor your headless server from across the office or access your PC from the other side of the world. Thanks to RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol), you can access any Windows XP
Pro or Windows 2000 system from any other Windows, Pocket PC, Mac or Linux client. RDP works across any TCP/IP connection.

RDC in practice

Running RDC couldn

PC Advisor (UK)