Sunday, June 8th 2008
Remote desktop at home and port numbers06/08/2008 12:01 PM
I am a HUGE fan of remote desktop, My server lab used to contain swarms of computers, mostly junk, used for single purpose, often I would go months without using one or the other, but, when I needed it I could just turn it on and have a pre-configured {fill in the blank} server that is up and running to play with.
Enter Virtualization.
My number of test machines has absolutely exploded, I now have single purpose virtual machines, I can clone easily dispose of failures quickly, come back to successes later.
Each of my test machines is just a few files on a 6 drive, Quad core server at home, which also serves as a hardware mirror for a production server.
As my dependancy increased, my productivity "away" decreased, when I'm on the laptop, I found myself connecting to one machine at home, then from there daisy chaining to another machine so, I have an RDP session inside an RDP session. Although this works, its not as productive as having direct connections.
My home router does port forwarding and I get to "choose" which machine or virtual is becomes the weakest link.
Recently, I've discovered the registry keys (on XP) to move the RDP service to an alternative port. By default RDP is on port 3389, for my purposes, I change the last two digits of the port number to the last two digits of the IP address.
So, for the machine that would have the IP address 192.168.1.15 at home would be on port 3315. This allows me to save RDP connection files for homeaddress:3315 and connect directly to that machine.
Here are the registry keys that I use:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\StandardProfile\GloballyOpenPorts\List]
"3389:TCP"="3389:TCP:*:Enabled:@xpsp2res.dll,-22009"
'this key is only necessary if you are using windows firewall
'I change this to:
"3315:TCP"="3315:TCP:*:Enabled:@xpsp2res.dll,-22009"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp]
"PortNumber"=dword:00000d3d
'00000d3d is the hex value for 3389, the Hex value for 3315 is cf3
Once those values are changed when the machine reboots, it comes back up using the new port, then all that is needed it to perform port forwarding at the router
Enter Virtualization.
My number of test machines has absolutely exploded, I now have single purpose virtual machines, I can clone easily dispose of failures quickly, come back to successes later.
Each of my test machines is just a few files on a 6 drive, Quad core server at home, which also serves as a hardware mirror for a production server.
As my dependancy increased, my productivity "away" decreased, when I'm on the laptop, I found myself connecting to one machine at home, then from there daisy chaining to another machine so, I have an RDP session inside an RDP session. Although this works, its not as productive as having direct connections.
My home router does port forwarding and I get to "choose" which machine or virtual is becomes the weakest link.
Recently, I've discovered the registry keys (on XP) to move the RDP service to an alternative port. By default RDP is on port 3389, for my purposes, I change the last two digits of the port number to the last two digits of the IP address.
So, for the machine that would have the IP address 192.168.1.15 at home would be on port 3315. This allows me to save RDP connection files for homeaddress:3315 and connect directly to that machine.
Here are the registry keys that I use:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\StandardProfile\GloballyOpenPorts\List]
"3389:TCP"="3389:TCP:*:Enabled:@xpsp2res.dll,-22009"
'this key is only necessary if you are using windows firewall
'I change this to:
"3315:TCP"="3315:TCP:*:Enabled:@xpsp2res.dll,-22009"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp]
"PortNumber"=dword:00000d3d
'00000d3d is the hex value for 3389, the Hex value for 3315 is cf3
Once those values are changed when the machine reboots, it comes back up using the new port, then all that is needed it to perform port forwarding at the router
Comments :
1. Jeff Wilson06/09/2008 09:59:26 AM
If your router supports it, you can also leave the internal port alone, but do the forwarding and translation in your router.
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