
Ask HN: Best solution for family remote support - billconan
My parents need my help on managing their computer constantly. I&#x27;m their IT guy.<p>The problem is we live in different countries.<p>There used to be an app called crossloop, similar to chrome remote desktop. Very easy to use.<p>Crossloop was acquired by another company and service was shut down.<p>Chrome remote desktop is a close replacement, we have used it for a while. but guiding my parents on the phone to go into chrome store and install it is already a painful process.<p>it also has many problems, for example, we have seen unmatched protocol version, unable to obtain access code.<p>remote support is too difficult for us. Is there any good solution?<p>Otherwise, this could be a good saas project I can do.<p>It&#x27;s more difficult on the phone, I don&#x27;t know if there is any remote support software for the phone.
======
i336_
Have you considered the idea of just running standard VNC? I mean using some
difficult solution one last time to get remote access, then configuring eg
TigerVNC on the remote machine.

There are many different dynamic DNS services you can use to keep a hostname
pointing at the right place; freedns.afraid.org is excellent.

There are a metric truckload of free and paid VNC apps for literally every
mobile OS too.

If you wanted to go one step further, you could also look into Intel AMT,
which provides hardware/BIOS-level VNC on (to keep it simple) pretty much all
Core i5/i7 processors, but requires a Windows machine on the local LAN (for
security) to run the proprietary app that establishes the connection. Random
link with more info: [http://blog.michael.kuron-germany.de/2011/10/using-
intel-amt...](http://blog.michael.kuron-germany.de/2011/10/using-intel-amts-
vnc-server/)

As a headsup, remote desktop as SaaS immediately means Really Niiiiice™
bandwidth costs since you need to route data through PoPs that are as close to
the middle of both ends as possible - and there's also the fact that routing
between two of your own PoPs might be the fastest transport.

~~~
billconan
This needs to be very easy to setup.

regarding bandwidth, I would use webrtc or other p2p options.

~~~
i336_
I'm going to go with an assumption that you're not familiar with VNC. If you
are, my apologies; please let me know.

First of all, VNC servers are extremely _fast_ to set up deterministically,
but I will concede that the server GUIs do suffer from "blury grid of knobs
and switches" syndrome, so it'd be something you'd be doing once you had
remote access via some other option (eg, GotoMyPC). (And of course you can
test the VNC connection while the other remote system is still running.)

The only other bit of config required is doing the necessary port forwarding
on your parents' router and/or modem. (I would recommend using a nonstandard
port, and also using a port outside the range nmap uses, for added security.
:P)

Once the VNC server is installed and the router configured, the setup will be
rock solid unless the modem(&/+)router fail[s]; the dyndns setup glitches; or
Windows itself loses it badly (for example with a virus), but AMT can cover
that, which was why I suggested that solution.

FWIW, when I move out I fully expect I'll be doing GUI remote support via a
combination of TigerVNC and AMT depending on what the situation calls for (I
expect most things will be solveable via SSH, since everything uses Linux
here, and I haven't needed to configure any VMs yet).

Finally, VNC predates the idea of things _not_ being peer-to-peer. The server
runs on the destination machine. Everything is configured manually by you so
there's nothing that will suddenly "go down" one day. I cannot recommend
enough that you try this.

Remember that you can figure it all out locally if you have two machines
available.

I'm happy to provide further info/pointers if you like!

------
gus_massa
I used Copilot a few times. It used to be free on weekends, but I'm not sure
if that option is still available.
[https://www.copilot.com/](https://www.copilot.com/)

~~~
billconan
Thank you, this looks like crossloop

