Dwight Watt - Newspaper Article #316 11/18/2015


Question: What is Remote Desktop Connection?

Answer:

Remote Desktop Connection (sometimes referred to as RDC) is an application included with Windows to allow you to get in another computer and run it like you are sitting in front of the other computer.

Remote Desktop Connection has to be set up on the machine you want to connect to and that machine must be running at least the business or professional version of Windows. You cannot use RDC to connect to a machine running home version of Windows

There will also have to be ports opened in the firewall to allow the connection thru as the ports RDC uses are normally closed for security reasons so people can’t seize PC desktops. There are ways to change the ports that RDC uses so that the port that is open does not appear to be RDC.

The computer connecting to the other PC can use any version of Windows.

Remote Desktop Connection allows you to keep on working on a computer you have set up fro specific purposes or have certain files on it while you are away from the computer. I know a number of people who use RDC to get in their office computer while at home or traveling and everything looks like and works like the PC at the office. If you were looking at the computer at the office while someone had used RDC you would see mouse pointer move like they do and programs open and close as they do it.

GoToMyPC is a commercial product out there that works very similar to RDC, except it uses port 80 that web pages use so no firewall adjustment needed and it needs installed on both machine. PCAnywhere is a similar program that Norton used to make that works similar.