VNC, No Longer Orphaned

geogeek6_7 writes "Icronic informs us of a couple new developments to everyone's favorite piece of remote-managment software, VNC. You may remember that the UK Lab responsible for the creation and maintainence of VNC closed. A company called RealVNC has been formed, sporting the original coders from the AT&T lab, and aiming to 'act as the focal point for open source VNC.' Secondly, the new company has released version 3.3.4 of VNC for Windows and Linux. Greater security and a new, speed-enhancing auto-encoding feature are included among many others in the new version."

Comments

Ghostscript-style business model?

[CommandNotFound]

Seems like they could make a decent living by selling an enhanced, secured version and then have the "last version" free as in beer & speech to help spread the product. Similar to how Aladdin has done with Ghostscript.

Also check out TightVNC

[GroundBounce]

For comparison, also check out TightVNC. TightVNC makes a remote graphical desktop quite usable over DSL speeds.

It sounds like the main VNC branch has now added a tight-like encoding (ZRLE) which may obviate the need for TightVNC, but TightVNC has some additional niceties like automatic tunneling over SSH.

VNC is how I got linux in to my MS based company.

[BoomerSooner]

We were looking to do demos for our software (web based) and wanted to be able to do something like webex (I'd link but their website is down! guess I'm glad I didn't pick them!).

For 1 demo using their system to 15 clients it was going to run between $800-$1200 for 1 to 1.5 hours. I told my boss we could test a solution for free on my box (dual boot Linux/win2000) and if it worked it would be $1200 one time. I demoed to our higher ups and we have a salesman that is using it 2-3 times a day and since our corporate office has conference phone systems already they are free (already a paid service, so why pay twice?).

In the end we spend $800 on the hardware $320 on VMWare $0 on VNC/xfrbserver (spelling?) to export to multiple hosts, and we have an MSDN subscription so I run Win98 in VMWare so the person demoing feels at home (even though it would have worked in Linux w/Netscape the sales people and clients are more comfortable in Windows).

At first they found it a little confusing. But now it's all the rave and I just bring it up remotely (or from the office) and keep an eye on it to make sure they dont accidentally close the exporting server (xf0bserver?), you'd be surprised how many times they kill their own demo!!!! lol...

Anyway since it was so successful I'm implementing a solution to automate offsite backups using sftp/ssh and encrypting our backups daily.

I hope for their sake they never make the mistake of firing me b/c noone else could even tell you what ls does!!! lol.... ensuring job security by doing a good job, saving money, and implementing solutions they dont understand.

Re:They have a lot of work on their hands

[fault0]

I'd have to agree that VNC isn't exactly good on dialup connections or even ISDN.

However, this is what tightvnc is for. Regular VNC works very well in a LAN though, and works quite well from every broadband connection I've used.

ssh tunnel

[goombah99]

I tunnel vnc through multiple firewalls all the time (over DSL);both direction run through a single port so it's actually easier than tunneling X windows. not to mention more secure than xhosts. And in my experience if you use the right client is WAY more robust and faster than remote x-windows. especially for real-time mouse actions (use a bad client and it stinks, so shop around).

some tips: generally you are better off NOT enabling ssh compression as VNC's compression works better. Supposedly tightVNC is the best for narrow pipes. But on fat pipes in actually is better not to compress. if you are worried about security do two things. first always turn off the http port (on by default at 580x). Second, for extra security only allow connections to/from loopback 127.0.0.1. Then use ssh to send it where you want. Finally, note that VNC itself is not encoded so the ONLY protection you are getting is the SSH encoding. If you dont tunnel all the way you are exposed. However since it is graphics info and not plain ascii, it takes a clever hacker to actually decode what you are sending in the clear.

PLEASE! Do not fork further

[egghat]

VNC is already split into the original distribution from ORL (now RealVNC, TightVNC from Constantin & friends, eSVNC, which added security and file transfers (though win only) and a bunch of Pocket PC, Palm, MacOS, OS X etc. forks.

VNC is such a wonderful und useful program and I sometimes dream of how much better, securer and faster it could be.

Plaese combine your efforts. The world will thank you.

bye egghat.