Cell Phones in Great Britain

Author

Mobile Data

elziko

2008-02-27, 4:33 am

I'm i the UK and I need to be able to be able to Remote Desktop into a
machine that could be anywhere in the UK at any time.

So I am considering something like the Orange ICON2 USB Modem for this
machine.

It seems to 'do' 3G when it can and the drops back to GPRS when it can't.
Assuming there is good enough reception will I be able to conect to this
remote machine via Remote Desktop?

Will it's internet connection be truly always on and accept incomming
connections?

TIA

Phil

2008-02-27, 7:33 am

"elziko" <elziko@yahoo.co.uk> writes:

> I'm i the UK and I need to be able to be able to Remote Desktop into a
> machine that could be anywhere in the UK at any time.
>
> So I am considering something like the Orange ICON2 USB Modem for this
> machine.
>
> It seems to 'do' 3G when it can and the drops back to GPRS when it can't.
> Assuming there is good enough reception will I be able to conect to this
> remote machine via Remote Desktop?
>
> Will it's internet connection be truly always on and accept incomming
> connections?
>
Do you mean you want to remotely access a PC which is connected to a mobile
network?

I would seriously doubt you can do this, when I connect my laptop to T-Mobiles
network I am on 10.xx.xx.xx series subnet, and there is clearly no way to route
to that subnet.

I would be suprised if Orange were any different, so unless you are a sysadmin
at orange I would guess its a non-starter.

You could remote run remote desktop from your mobile connected laptop, I really
wouldn't want to use that sort of protocol over the internet though, I would
go for VNC through a SHH tunnel.

HTH Phil
--
Old protocols never die. They just get migrated over TCP/IP.

elziko

2008-02-27, 7:33 am

"Phil" <pj@thecork.trig222.f9.co.uk> wrote in message
news:uwsoqbqxl.fsf@GLKD2485705...
> Do you mean you want to remotely access a PC which is connected to a
> mobile
> network?

Yes

Theo Markettos

2008-02-27, 10:34 am

Phil <pj@thecork.trig222.f9.co.uk> wrote:
> Do you mean you want to remotely access a PC which is connected to a mobile
> network?
>
> I would seriously doubt you can do this, when I connect my laptop to T-Mobiles
> network I am on 10.xx.xx.xx series subnet, and there is clearly no way to route
> to that subnet.

You could run some kind of VPN on the mobile PC, which connects to a VPN
server on the other machine. Windows has a built-in VPN client for this
purpose, which I've used to connect to a Windows VPN server - I don't know
which versions of Windows the server ships with, though. You might be able
to automatically run the VPN connection when the mobile PC connects, or have
something every N minutes to check it's running if you wanted it up all
the time.

Watch for latency though - I've had pretty dire latency (~1s) on GPRS which
wouldn't be fun in a remote desktop situation. I'm told it's better in 3G
but I haven't tried that.

Theo

elziko

2008-02-27, 10:34 am

"Phil" <pj@thecork.trig222.f9.co.uk> wrote in message
news:uwsoqbqxl.fsf@GLKD2485705...
> I would seriously doubt you can do this, when I connect my laptop to
> T-Mobiles
> network I am on 10.xx.xx.xx series subnet, and there is clearly no way to
> route
> to that subnet.
>
> I would be suprised if Orange were any different, so unless you are a
> sysadmin
> at orange I would guess its a non-starter.
>
> You could remote run remote desktop from your mobile connected laptop, I
> really
> wouldn't want to use that sort of protocol over the internet though, I
> would
> go for VNC through a SHH tunnel.

Sorry - I completely missed the part of your post - thanks for the info!

elziko

2008-02-27, 12:33 pm

> You could run some kind of VPN on the mobile PC, which connects to a VPN
> server on the other machine.

We already have a VPN server here so I can install a client on the remote
machine and connect like that. Thanks for the idea.

I'm not expecting the performance to be very good - I have used remote
desktop the other way round where I connected with a client running a GPRS
connection and a server on cable. It wasn't great but it was possible to do
basic maintenance. I assume it will perform equally badly the way round I am
proposing?

Chris Lawrence

2008-02-27, 10:33 pm

On Wed, 27 Feb 2008, elziko wrote:

> We already have a VPN server here so I can install a client on the remote
> machine and connect like that. Thanks for the idea.

You could try using logmein.com which is free, that connects out from
the system and shows in your web-based control panel on the client from
where you can jump on with a java enabled browser.

Alterntively you could try running Sun's Secure Global Desktop on a
static management server which has a VPN connection to the target
machine, you can then access the entire desktop or indivdual apps from a
java browser on a Win CE device (SGD will connect via RDP). I would
describe this as semi-permanent with more investment up front but more
flexible if your longer term situation demands it, I have no idea what
your circumstances are obviusly.

--
Chris

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