RDP / Remote Assistance

I often need to help my bother with his PC, since he doesn't have much computer knowledge. When he wanted internet access (about a year ago), I asked around and PN was recommeded. He has a 2M plus account.

Issues would no longer be a problem, we thought!

However, these days, I can't help him remotely, because I just can't get a stable connection to his machine. The bandwidth is extremely poor, I mean, several minutes to start a connection, which will often then fail.

I have noticed several issues:
1. He is experiencing poor bandwidth generally: downlink 230-450 kbs, uplink 100-150 kbs. For a 2M connection, this seems poor?
2. His router shows regular disconnects/reconnects, like 10-12 times from 5PM-midnight yesterday. Timeouts on the router and at PN are disabled.

However, my main issue is remote connection, hence my questions:
a) Does PN block Windows XP RDP on port 3389?
b) Does PN block Windows XP remote assistant?
c) How about VNC on port 5900?

Please tell me this is still possible (it worked a long time ago!)!

Plusnet introduced a firewall last week which was turned on by default on plus accounts,your brother may need to turn it off before you will get remote access.

Yes, thanks. I should have mentioned that - I already disabled it completely whilst sorting this issue.

I can make connection, i.e. firewalls off, ports opened, etc, but data transferis diabolical, and as mentioned, usually then fails. It is totally unusable.

No blocking, but sounds like the line has a fault, internal or external. Does the modem he have provide detailed stats, e.g. snr, crc errors etc.
Then check the wiring (if above is showing something) e.g. check nothing is wrong internally then checkout the external wiring.

I would disagree, to many people have complained about this as well, there was a post on the PUG site iirc whereby the business customer was having the same symptons.

Definitley not a line fault I would say, more likely shaping and mismatched signatures etc.

Maybe an important point is that it was working months ago, but I've only recently tried the remote connections, so I don't know when it stopped working.

He is using a Netgear DG834; it doesn't show line S/N details. It is showing:
Down Stream 2272 Kb/s
Up Stream 288 Kb/s

Typical usage is 150-200MB per month, so he shold not be hitting any limits.

Ah, glad you posted that. I've been having problems initiating an ICQ chat session with someone on a BB+ account recently. It needs NAT and Firewall rules on routers to work so this pretty much explains it...

It was getting progressively slower making the connection before this so I suspect that is due to some shaping at the PN end. Also file transfers over ICQ had been very slow a long while ~5KB/s

Edited by deleted (Wed 14-Feb-07 22:03:48)

Wonder if anyone has tried www.logmein.com for remote viewing of a PC on BB+?

My sister has BB+ and in the past I've had no problem helping her.

With the Broadband Firewall in place now, I'll see (in the next few days, if poss) if there's a problem getting access.

(LogMeIn uses https connection - possibly via USA - a PC to be controlled 'calls home' to Logmein.com so dynamic IP isn't a problem - though not tested yet, of course.)

As I've mentioned in my previous post, the file transfers over ICQ have been getting slower and slower from my F2S account and my friend's BB+ account. 5KB/s or less. I put that down to shaping.

Like you, I get asked to help out on other's machines so for one friend I installed UltraVNC on a BB+ machine and it will simply not work on the BB+ account. It might connect, but it's too slow to actually do anything with - i.e. it can't transfer enough data to allow the screen to refresh.

well its the disconnects that make me suspect line problems, and I would venture line problems are more common than are given credit for. For a while I was strongly believing there was a network fault when I was getting download speeds of 100K, 50K, 150K. My modem wasn't disconnecting. Sometimes I would get the full whack. I eventually realised that I was getting SNR blips that were making the modem try for a reconnect without disconnecting (a belkin) - well its a long story

So all I am saying is that, first that should be ruled out. I am not saying there might not be a issue with BB+ - there might, but equally there might be a line fault - and things can work at first for many months. My particular fault seems to arrive in 4 monthly intervals for about 1-2 weeks, then back to perfection - go figure.