Timbuktu vs VNC vs ARD2
What I need is the ability to remotely connect to my Macs across the internet and through NAT routers (Airport) and interact with the remote machine's GUI in a reasonably efficient manner. How do the three products listed in the title stack up in terms of feature, speed and ease of use? I'm not interested in intranet administration, only administration through Internet. The ability to reboot machines remotely and not lose the connection would be nice too.
Comments
In terms of features, here's the ranking:
1. ARD2
2. Timbuk2
3. VNC
ARD is primarily for managing many computers... managing, not just remote controlling. If you just want to remote control a machine, it's overkill. If you need to manage computers to install software, run reports, etc. - it looks like it will be awesome.
Timbuk2 has more features and is going to be more user friendly and probably faster than VNC (haven't used it in a long time). VNC is free, though. (ARD2 will apparently control VPN machines too, which is cool)
NONE of them can administer multiple machines on the other side of a NAT, without VPN'ing into that NAT. Airport doesn't do VPN, but you could set up port mapping and administer 1 computer on the other side the NAT. There nothing any software package can do about all this - it's just how NAT works.
Hmm... that seems about it. I hope that explains it OK.
cheers.
Originally posted by nothing
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NONE of them can administer multiple machines on the other side of a NAT, without VPN'ing into that NAT. Airport doesn't do VPN, but you could set up port mapping and administer 1 computer on the other side the NAT. There nothing any software package can do about all this - it's just how NAT works.
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Thanks for the rundown.
I seem to remember reading about TB2's ability to locate remote clients using email addresses registered on TB2's server. Does this feature get through NAT? I'd think not since the email address is still mapped to an external IP.