Author Topic: Working Remotely  (Read 10884 times)

2020-03-17, 22:11:34

Charlie Nicols

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Hi All,
With the current situation I think many of us may find ourselves having to work remotely.

With our kind of work this can be technically challenging so any kind of information share on this topic may help another out.

If you would like to share your setup and how it's working for you/your company and any tips to working remotely I think this could be beneficial.

Personally tested are two types of systems
Windows Remote Desktop + VPN

VPN
Draytek router setup with PPTP VPN that use the draytek smart VPN client on the user side.
Avoiding using the built in windows 10 VPN as we have found there can be varied bugs, ie sometimes the connection only starts if you go into the setting>vpn>connect instead of just connecting through the bottom right network icon on your screen

Remote Desktop
The once connected login via remote desktop connections. I have personally found that the remote desktop app from the Microsoft store seems to hold a connection better but can't prove this yet.

Some things we are working around.

The subnet our users were on was the same as our work, this causes regular interruptions to the connection. To get around this we have added a subnet mask into our VPN draytek client. If anyone requests more info re this I can do a detailed post.

Remote desktop freezes, closing and opening the connection resolves this.
In group policy we have added wait 'keep alive connection interval to 1' & automatic re connection enable
Computer Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Remote Desktop Services -> Remote Desktop Session Host -> Connections

Citrix Workspace

We also use citrix virtualization to log into virtual machines and have found this can provide a lot better performance/stability but I have to say the setup is still tricky,expensive and can have problems as well. Teradici comes highly recommended if you are going along this route.

Support
Zoho Assist
For support I have found this to be a godsend, it's not too expensive and allows remote access at all times to any computer you install it on. You can remotely reboot power on ect ect as well as provide support links co workers can click on to get support at home. Obvious alternatives, anydesk/team viewer.

Communication

Discord is actually proving to be an amazing tool to keep the office chatting and together. Easy to setup split into meeting rooms people can jump around I highly recommend this.

Slack, Zoom, Google hangouts being some other alternatives.

That's all for me now. I will post any further findings in case it can help anyone.

« Last Edit: 2020-03-17, 22:15:27 by Charlie Nicols »

2020-03-18, 11:26:27
Reply #1

twcg

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VPN

I can highly recommend Wireguard as a VPN solution! The bandwidths and latencys are amazing, the Server and Clients are pretty lightweight...
https://www.wireguard.com/


Remote Desktop:

RDP over VPN: works, but in our case we have problems with the display of cinema 4ds viewport...

Additional solution: RDP with the Apache Guacamole Gateway:
https://guacamole.apache.org/
HTML5 Based Gateway to RDP, SSH, VNC, etc... since the gateway is in your lan and you will have to expose it to the public (usually via port-forwarding) security and authentication should be handled with care (2FA and stuff)... in our case, same problems with the Cinema 4D Viewport...

Chrome Remote Desktop... great alternative to teamviewer/anydesk/etc
Performance is great, everything works as expected
« Last Edit: 2020-03-18, 11:47:20 by twcg »

2020-03-18, 12:32:13
Reply #2

NOOKTA

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Unfortunately I can't find anything in english regarding this: Teamviewer is inofficially offering their services for free during the Corona-Virus time.

This link is to a german site
https://t3n.de/news/coronavirus-teamviewer-beruflich-1262679/

This might also be a solution for someone.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but Remote Desktop doesn't support open GL acceleration, that may cause some difficulties with softwares. But on the other hand it is faster/better quality than Teamviewer.
www.nookta.de — architectural visualization based in germany
https://www.instagram.com/nookta_visualization/

2020-03-19, 16:36:20
Reply #3

Charlie Nicols

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Yeh, that's also why you can't open sketchup over a remote desktop.

I use this bat file to disconnect remote desktop, open sketchup, reconnect and that seems to work.

@echo off
echo.
echo Remote Desktop will be temporarily disconnected . . . please reconnect after a few seconds.
echo.
pause
@echo on
REM The active session has an arrow as the first character
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
FOR /F %%A in ('qwinsta') do (
   set tempSessionName=%%A
   if "!tempSessionName:~0,1!"==">"  (
      @echo on
      tscon.exe !tempSessionName:~1! /v /dest:console
      @echo off
   )   
)
cd C:\Users\User\Desktop
start Blank.skp
@echo off
echo.
pause


Just run copy and save that as a .bat file and save a sketchup file called Blank.skp on the desktop.

2020-03-19, 16:37:20
Reply #4

Jpjapers

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Weve been using UniFi VPN and windows remote desktop + google hangouts.
Can highly recommend remote utilities too.

2020-03-21, 11:30:06
Reply #5

sprayer

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i replaced teamviewer with anydesk