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Why everyone's wasting space talking about phone line options I don't know. He's a hospital network admin who's been online since 1984. It's safe to assume he's researched the options pretty thoroughly and 28.8k is as good as he can get.

At those speeds, forget trying to work directly, you're better off with a remote desktop product. If the budget allows Citrix is meant to be very good, however for a smaller outlay, Dameware's Mini Remote control is superb. For $89.95 you get a remote control program you can use to manage all your desktops at work *and* you can install a copy at home as well.

It supports the RDP protocol which I *think* is better for slow connections, and has it's own driver for true remote access. For best performance just set it to 800x600 in 256 colours, and it even has a set of defaults for 28.8k connections.

I've been using it for 2 years and couldn't imagine running a network without it now. If you're interested, check out http://www.dameware.com/

It is incredibly powerful and includes all of the fancy things like file transfers, remote install/upgrades, encryption, remote task and service manager, etc. Basically you can either control the desktop or access all the settings and services as if you were at the desktop thru a client program. Now bare in mind, this software is NOT cheap but it is seriously powerful.

Dameware is a good example of a commercial tool, albeit not designed specifically for security probing, it is for remotely controlling (if maliciously: exploiting) machines. I've seen examples used "in the wild" to take over machines to serve as warez sites, and it is "standard" enough that you can often monitor plenty of dameware-specific traffic on an infested network. Versions have also been modified or grafted onto other programs to do malicious probes. So, by themselves, no, there aren't necessarily tools to run exploits and install shellcode, but remote administration could be regarded as equivalent in some ways, or with a bit of tweaking, turned to such ends.

Dameware : manage the machines from a remote location.

netusers.exe and some perl or python thrown in to deal with the output of netusers. You can get all your user stats and stuff from this.

With those tools you can develop some scripts to track usage, avaiable comptures and throw it all up on a web site.

Call me old fashioned, but I don't think that young children should go to pr0n sites.. I passively monitor the sites they go to with Linksys Log viewer I've caught all the kids going to inappropriate sites at one point or another. Each time they get grounded from their computer for a few days or a week. I also installed DameWare Mini Remote Control on their computers so at anytime I can take a look at what they have on their screen from the comfort of my own computer. With this setup it is kind of hard to monitor their Chat conversations.I've heard that SpectorSoft is good for Key Capture, Site Logging, Chat Logging, and Screen Shot Logging, but it costs $99. Other than that I don't actively block any sites, but when they are grounded I exclude their IP from the router. Seems I periodically remove Gator type programs from the computer that belongs to our youngest child. The Youngest is also the best at Q3A and Urban Terror! He sometimes even beats me when we go head to head.

How about this one...

dameware for NT
http://www.dameware.com/ has been used by MANY crackers to remote control and take over systems.

It has been installed by crackers via automated scripts exploiting the same code that recent trojans have used to silently install the "application" and then use it to control the systems. [I have seen at least five that have been compromised within hours of the exploits announcements. The managers of the systems thought that they had patched in time but they were mistaken... check the services]

Initially McAfee detected it as an unwanted program until the dameware software company complained/lobbied to get it off the list of unwanted programs.
http://www.dameware.com/support/faq/faq .asp?ID=FAQ 1066 . You do the math on that one... Who is to be served better? the users of the application or the users of the antivirus program? At the very least nai should have a way for the user to select which items are to stay on the list/selectivly disable its detection if one has a legit use for the app and chooses to do so..

How about this one...

dameware for NT
http://www.dameware.com/ has been used by MANY crackers to remote control and take over systems.

It has been installed by crackers via automated scripts exploiting the same code that recent trojans have used to silently install the "application" and then use it to control the systems. [I have seen at least five that have been compromised within hours of the exploits announcements. The managers of the systems thought that they had patched in time but they were mistaken... check the services]

Initially McAfee detected it as an unwanted program until the dameware software company complained/lobbied to get it off the list of unwanted programs.
http://www.dameware.com/support/faq/faq .asp?ID=FAQ 1066 . You do the math on that one... Who is to be served better? the users of the application or the users of the antivirus program? At the very least nai should have a way for the user to select which items are to stay on the list/selectivly disable its detection if one has a legit use for the app and chooses to do so..

Two of my favourites are Dameware Mini Remote Control and NetOP. Dameware's remote control is a bit slow, and uses quite a bit of CPU resources on the server side, but that can be helped a lot with the options (force 4-bit grayscale etc). Still it's my favourite since you can just attempt connecting with it, and if it detects the remote computer doesn't have the service installed, it can install it remotely on the fly (provided you have admin rights to the remote server), and even remove the service upon disconnect.

NetOP on the other hand can't be remotely installed, but it's still the fastest and cpu friendliest of all remote capture programs I have used so far.

I manage lots of workstations and several servers in a state agency. We use Dameware for remote information collection and control.

In the past we used SMS but it was waaay too slow, especially across some of our 56k lines. Dameware is a wonderful product. There may be some way to script it's use as well. I was provided with the product by the department, so I don't know what the licensing issues are, but it looks like it's around $200.00 or less for download and is available for a 30 day free trial.

I really endorse this product. Hope the info helps.