Login with RDP, without bumping current session.

Vgolfmaster said:

Hi all,

I'm not looking for simultaneous access to a machine, and please nudge me in the right direction if this is the wrong thread for this - I need to set up 2 windows 7 machines for remote access from outside of the network.

I am able to get access to either machine using the default port of 3389 (and only activating RDC on one machine at a time). If I change the listening port, I lose access for some reason. I have only tried 2 ports so far, 5150 and 5151, so there may be a potential conflict, not sure yet (this was done using the registry mod for the listening port). I only say that as a FAQ I ran across for RDC setup in Win 7 suggested trying ports over 64000. I am going to test this tomorrow, but wanted to ask here if anyone had any other ideas.

What I am looking for, is a way to connect from school, to either of my 2 Win 7 machines. I am using a Linksys WRT54G router, but not using wireless. Like I said, assigning the port forwarding to port 3389 works on each machine individually. I am assuming I have to have each machine set to listen to a unique port in order to do this, but how do I do that if only 3389 works?

if mapped according to the assigned listening ports, I should be able to pick which to connect to, right? ie:

174.105.222.188:63000 for machine 1
174.105.222.188:63500 for machine 2

Hopefully the test tomorrow of a higher port range will answer this, but I'll happily take any other advice that anyone might have.

tia

Vg

VG

There is a much easier way. Team viewer. I do the exact thing you are looking for from any location and it is free

Hi there

The problem in connecting to more than ONE machine behind your router is the PORT FORWARDING mechanism in the router since the router will only port forward to a SPECIFIC LAN IP ADDRESS.

What you will have to do is perhaps find a way of making RDP on the 2ND machine use a DIFFERENT port for RDP and then port forward THAT port to the 2nd machine on your Lan.

Now on your Front end computer I'm not sure how you would arrange that -- you'd perhaps need to set up some script file which would dynamically change the RDP port depending on what machine you want to access.

This is why RDP gets messy for dealing with more than one computer.

You could see if using "Putty" is a possible solution to this as you could easily have several configurations

http://www.itauthor.com/2008/05/24/r...-putty-tunnel/

You will still need to port forward DIFFERENT ports to each computer however.

You *might* be better off setting up a HOME VPN / SERVER which would then allow you to access any machine on your network.

I assume that REACHING your home network is OK -- there are services like no_ip etc for providing you with an IP / domain name from the Internet.

Cheers
jimbo

Hi there

Using custom ports should work -- I like the Putty solution too.
Port Forwarding at the router end is a bit limiting because a specific port can only be forwarded to a specific machine - but it's logical in away since you usually want to access a specific machine.

Cheers
jimbo

Success !!

Thanks for all of the tips and suggestions guys, I really appreciate the feedback you have all given me. I was able to get this working by adding the custom port assignments in windows firewall, and can now access both machines (from outside of the network) by way of a unique port assignment for each.

If I remember right, windows XP recognized assigned ports and allowed them automatically. Or maybe even worse, it never prevented their use to begin with - just simply don't remember. What I DO know, is that 3389 is enabled in Win7 when you turn on remote access, but other ports are not. This requires that Windows firewall be set for with exceptions for any ports other than 3389. Port 3389 is also the default 'listening' port in 3389, and the registry modification must also be made to reassign each machine to 'listen' to the newly assigned port for RDC.

Hope this helps anyone else who is trying this down the road!

Thanks again everyone.

Vg