TELNET instead of RDP if connectivity is bad?

[Roland Schweiger]

At my home i have a windows7 (x64) machine that i can use remotely.
Literally, when i am abroad, i can remotely start my machine (by logging
onto my router and sending the magic packet to the network card),
then i use the remote desktop protocol (MSTSC /admin) to log onto my machine
and "work on it", copy files to a remote location etc.

Everything fine but there are situations where my internet connection (on
the remote end) is too slow or instable for usable RDP connections.

Is there some telnet-like (or similar) text-orientated way to log onto my
machine just by the command line instead of desktop?
There are situations where this would help me, for instance if i just wanted
to copy one particular file.

greetings

Roland Schweiger

 

[Joe Morris]

At my home i have a windows7 (x64) machine that i can use remotely.
Literally, when i am abroad, i can remotely start my machine (by logging
onto my router and sending the magic packet to the network card),
then i use the remote desktop protocol (MSTSC /admin) to log onto my
machine and "work on it", copy files to a remote location etc.

Everything fine but there are situations where my internet connection (on
the remote end) is too slow or instable for usable RDP connections.

Is there some telnet-like (or similar) text-orientated way to log onto my
machine just by the command line instead of desktop?
There are situations where this would help me, for instance if i just
wanted to copy one particular file.

Telnet client and telnet server are both part of Windows 7, but are not
installed by default (see the Programs and Features control panel).

I'll strongly recommend AGAINST using telnet (from any source) unless
there's absolutely no alternative: it, like ftp, sends its traffic
(including your userid and password) across the communications link without
encryption. Anyone with a rudimentary network monitor will be able to see
your credentials...it's not even as good as ROT13. (And it's just as secure
as double-ROT13...)

Joe Morris

 

[Paul]

Telnet client and telnet server are both part of Windows 7, but are not
installed by default (see the Programs and Features control panel).

I'll strongly recommend AGAINST using telnet (from any source) unless
there's absolutely no alternative: it, like ftp, sends its traffic
(including your userid and password) across the communications link without
encryption. Anyone with a rudimentary network monitor will be able to see
your credentials...it's not even as good as ROT13. (And it's just as secure
as double-ROT13...)

Joe Morris

On my little Linux test computer, the installation has telnet turned off
by default. They instead, suggest ssh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell

I don't know how well that would work for Windows. There could be a port
of sshd around for Windows.

To go from one machine to another, I

1) Create keys on the target machine.
2) Copy a file from that destination machine, to the source machine (id_dsa?)
3) From the (remote) source machine, do

ssh -l username 192.168.1.2

The machines exchange keys or whatever, then I'm prompted for the password
on the destination machine. The session looks like a telnet window.

In addition to ssh, there are commands such as "scp", which is a
way to copy files from one machine to the other, all while the data
stream is encrypted. I've used that a couple times, between machines
in my computer room.

In the picture in that Wikipedia article, there is a picture of
"putty". I've got a copy of "putty" here too, running on my Windows
machine. But I use that with an actual serial connection at 38400,
running to the Linux machine (that's for operation during initial
text mode installation). I haven't tried to do that with ssh involved
at all. "putty" works over TCP/IP or over a COM port and
serial link. The documentation for putty leaves a bit to be desired,
and I had to look through the source to figure out I needed this
as a command. I run this command from an MSDOS window, and a
putty window opens.

putty -serial COM3 -sercfg 38400,8,n,1,X

*******

Some more info here, on perhaps solving your problem.

http://www.openssh.com/windows.html

I have no idea whether any of that is relevant, but it's
an example of an attempt at a secure connection.

Good luck,
Paul

 

[Char Jackson]

On my little Linux test computer, the installation has telnet turned off
by default. They instead, suggest ssh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell

I don't know how well that would work for Windows. There could be a port
of sshd around for Windows.

In addition to ssh, there are commands such as "scp", which is a
way to copy files from one machine to the other, all while the data
stream is encrypted. I've used that a couple times, between machines
in my computer room.

Some more info here, on perhaps solving your problem.

http://www.openssh.com/windows.html

I have no idea whether any of that is relevant, but it's
an example of an attempt at a secure connection.

I've used WinSCP with very good results.

From the home page:

What is WinSCP?

WinSCP is an open source SFTP client and FTP client for Windows. Its
main function is the secure file transfer between a local and a
remote computer. Beyond this, WinSCP offers basic file manager
functionality. It uses Secure Shell (SSH) and supports, in addition
to Secure FTP, also legacy SCP protocol.

<http://winscp.net/eng/index.php>

 

[Roland Schweiger]

"Joe Morris"

I'll strongly recommend AGAINST using telnet (from any source) unless
there's absolutely no alternative: it, like ftp, sends its traffic
(including your userid and password) across the communications link without
encryption. Anyone with a rudimentary network monitor will be able to see
your credentials...it's not even as good as ROT13. (And it's just as
secure as double-ROT13...)

Although i am normally not too concearned abour security,
i totally agree on this point (telnet not being better than ROT13).
Only was looking for some kind of alternative to RDP (which i greatly like
and enjoy),
and the alternative should only be if connectivity is 'very' bad ...

But i am thinking of a different idea,
for example when remotely starting the machine,
it can mount some virtual HDD drive (with webDAV or similar)
which would let me easily (and more securely) let me access some of the
files i need,
then i only have to log onto RDP to shut down the machine again with
shutdown /s

greetings

Roland Schweiger

 

[Roland Schweiger]

"Char Jackson"

From the home page:

What is WinSCP?

WinSCP is an open source SFTP client and FTP client for Windows. Its
main function is the secure file transfer between a local and a
remote computer. Beyond this, WinSCP offers basic file manager
functionality. It uses Secure Shell (SSH) and supports, in addition
to Secure FTP, also legacy SCP protocol.

<http://winscp.net/eng/index.php>



Thanks - this might indeed be helpful for file transfer,
i still must log on by RDP to shutdown the computer but most of t he
transactions i use, are file transfer.

greetings

Roland Schweiger

 

[Nil]

Plain FTP, without SSL, transmits the username and password (and
the entire payload) in the clear, so you'll probably want to
enable SSL.

Filezilla Server is an excellent, free FTP and FTPS server:

<http://filezilla-project.org/>

 

[AGVirt]

You might want to try Ericom Blaze an RDP acceleration and compression product. Blaze accelerates RDP performance by up to 25 times, while significantly reducing network bandwidth consumption over low-bandwidth/high latency connections.

Since Ericom Blaze is installed directly on the RDP host and RDP client it provides end-to-end encryption for complete security, avoiding the security problems involved with using telnet.

Read more about Blaze and download a free evaluation at:
http://www.ericom.com/Blaze

Adam