Back in March I wrote about single click remote control but I found another quick and dirty way to provide remote assistance. Hamachi! No, not tuna. Hamachi is a VPN solution that does not require you to setup any sever or open any ports and best of all, the standard edition is free. You download the software and install it on the computer you want to remote control, then download and install it on the computer you are controlling from. The installation is easy and the program walks you through the configuration.
Now here is the interesting stuff. It works by creating another network connector that gets a static IP from the Hamachi network. Each new installtion gets it’s own unique IP address whick allows your computer to communicate with other computers on the Hamachi network. Ok, I thought to myself, “This must be hacker paradise!”. But in order to connect to another computer you must create a unique “network” name and password so only those that know your network name and password combination can connect. It’s sort of a VPN inside of a VPN. You would think that this would have high overhead and perform poorly, but it uses UDP peer-to-peer packets to communicate so there is less overhead than a traditional VPN. Also it allows for NAT traversal so you don’t have to open ports most firewalls ( some firewall rules are very stringent). A paid version is also available that provides some additional features but using Hamachi and Windows remote desktop or VNC you can connect to any computer easily.
https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp
