Question : Problem: Remote Control + Vista/Windows 2008 + Running as a Service + port 443

We are a support firm that does a lot of night work on clients' computers.  

Currently we use a remote control program that we are very happy with, except that it does not support running as a service under Vista or Windows 2008.  But there is one feature of this program that we are VERY fond of:  it does not require a port to be opened on the router... and that's good... since asking our clients to open a port would cut our business in half.  We walk them through installing a small app, then it's running forevermore for us to connect as needed.  We can log off and on, and re-boot... and requires no special ports to be opened.

Vista and Windows 2008 make it tough enough to run even programs like VNC as a service... but when we throw in the fact that we have to open a port like 5900, it's a deal-killer.  Can it listen on 443?  We've seen suggestions that it can... but oftentimes that is followed by the comment that our *client* would need to connect to *us*... and recall that much of our work is done at night, so that is impractical.  And recall that we usually don't have any access to their firewall.

Would SSH help?  I can get access to the host computer at least once to help set it up, and I just about always have administrative rights... so I would be able to set up SSH, or whatever, to configure it the way I needed to.  The catch is for my client to be able to logout, and us be able to connect... or for us to be able to re-boot, then re-connect.

Any suggestions?

Answer : Problem: Remote Control + Vista/Windows 2008 + Running as a Service + port 443

I misfired a little with DynDNS, this is more commonly used to permit web access to your own server from a remote site. You register your name with them, install the free client on your machine then connect at will. I have it coupled with a free http server for file transfer and it works well. If you had a small number of customers to service, you could set each of them up as hosts, but it wouldn't suit a larger operation. Teamviewer is the go for you I think.

Chris B

http://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/