Carlsbad Cubes Wolf Paulus

software

Insanely great software
By Wolf Paulus <wolf@wolfpaulus.com>

Posted Thursday, February 02nd, 2006

For a couple of days now, I'm working on a post showing how to access a Mac remotely, even when it's behind a really tightly set up firewall. However, this will have to wait another day or two.
Earlier today, Aymie sent me an invite to the next XGroup Meeting, a company internal geek meeting, which covers all things Linux and Mac OS X - since it's after work, there is usually also some beer to improve the turnout ...
We used to have dosxx - LinuX OS X, two Xs get it? However, it's just not good beer, even if the label fits nicely. Anyway, for incomprehensible reasons, I won't be able to attend this month's meeting and was looking for a way to be there, at least virtually.
Now, if everyone stays in the Windows world, there are good commercial solutions available, e.g. GotoMeeting or WebEx. However, this is the XGroup that is meeting.
While some of the presentations may be supported by PowerPoint slides, this is definitely a cross-platform event.

Bosco's Screen Share

Enough with the introduction, I think I found the perfect way to attend the XGroup meeting while being up here remotely in beautiful Santa Barbara. The solution is Bosco's Screen Share.
When I found the Web site, David was my only P2P buddy online, but he fortunately agreed to try this out with me. In literally only a few minutes, we both had the software installed and running, and Dave was looking at my screen. BTW, he is on Windows XP, while I'm running OS X 10.4.4.
One party has to open PORT 20299 (well, that's just the default, changeable to whatever port fits) for incoming traffic, while the other party initiates the session by calling the listening party's IP address.
Since I started this all and talked David into this little testing session, I didn't want him to change his router's forwarding table (NAT). Fortunately, my landlord's wireless router, that I'm currently using at my remote location, is pretty much left at its default setting, meaning admin admin lets you in - tweaking the settings to one's needs.


The port forwarding was configured in a sec and David was looking at my Mac's screen on his XP box.
Once a session is established, the direction of the screen sharing can be changed and I was able to look at his XP screen without him opening any ports on his router.
Give it a try, this is insanely great software - and it's free. I'm really looking forward now to attending Monday's XGroup meeting. Don't tell my landlord though, I'll have to hack into the router again Monday night ;-)


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Published on: Thursday, February 02nd, 2006  •  Category: [software]
Article URL : http://wolfpaulus.com/journal/software/screenshare.html