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Ask HN: Alternatives to Team Viewer?

45 points by riebschlager ↗ HN
I have several machines around the country that I need to remotely manage. Team Viewer has been unreliable and I'm looking to move our organization away from it.

Can anyone recommend a better remote management solution?

60 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] thread
edoceo
I've been using SimpleHelp. Self-hosted. Not perfect but very good, reasonable cost. Install an agent or use a one-time app.
scsibusfault
Screenconnect.
benjohnson
After being both out by Connectwise, Screenconnect's new pricing model is horribly expensive now - I'm grandfathered but wouldn't touch it now. Simple Help is seems to at the point where Screenconnect was a few years ago - works, cheap, and good support.
reitanqild
Let me add to this that in addition to OP stating that it has been unreliable I think there are two other big reasons to move away:

1. TeamViewer is used a lot for Microsoft scams and AFAIK they don't care very much.

2. Dark patterns. TeamViewer upgrade their protocol all-the-time and once one part has updated the others have to as well, forcing the cost on everyone. (And the pricing is outrageous IMO. When you can get a full office suite for less than the subscription cost of the remote support solution then something odd is going on.)

rgloeckner
there is FastViewer, don't know the cost and of course several free variants of VNC
MatzeBraun
http://anydesk.com
dharma1
I've been meaning to test this - how is the video codec, they say it's much better than others?

I mainly use remote windows sessions for modeling/rendering with 3DS Max

lhabjane
Best alternative, but it's still in the making. Unstable on Windows XP and buggy sometimes.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
simlevesque
RDP ? Why doesn't anyone use the official protocol for remote desktop on Windows ? It's fast. I say this as a unix dev that likes to RDP into a Windows box to test stuff.
detaro
Many people don't think of RDP because it isn't great for support-type jobs: you can't share the screen with the local user. But for administrative purposes where that is not required it is a good way to go.
dsp1234
That's what "Window Remote Assistance"[0] is for.

"By following a few steps, you can invite someone to connect to your computer. After he or she is connected, that person can view your computer screen and chat with you about what you both see. With your permission, your helper can even use his or her own mouse and keyboard to control your computer and show you how to fix a problem."

[0] - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-is-windows-r...

unprepare
yeah cuz i want to spend half an hour explaining how to send an invite to the CEO who cant connect to his email 5 minutes before a critical meeting....

in other words, teamviewer requires 0 user interaction

dogma1138
If you can create scripts that do that for you....

If it's a domain computer you don't even need that.

unprepare
scripts are fallible, especially when the user is in another country with no access to the DC

servers is one thing, user support is another animal.

pat_space
windows 10 home doesn't include RDP
Aldo_MX
the last time I checked it included the client, anyway, you usually don't mount a server with windows home.
drdaeman
The server is present in Home editions as well, although the access is invite-only. It can be found under the "Remote Assistance" name (msra.exe).

I'm not sure if non-MS clients (like rdesktop) are able to work with it, though.

dharma1
OpenGL doesn't work with RDP - it's an issue for using some apps remotely.

https://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/1981...

Aldo_MX
I remember reading a while ago about a virtual GPU with RemoteFx[1], I have no idea how it works though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemoteFX

unprepare
RemoteFX works really good, but it only works on specific hardware iirc
dharma1
Had never heard of RemoteFX before, thanks.

Looks like it works on almost any new GPUs now.

Question - Could I use hyper-V and RemoteFX to do something different - enable CUDA/GPU passthrough from a Windows host to a Linux VM?

I'd like to do some deep learning training on my Windows GPU machine without dual booting into Linux.

unprepare
you need a CPU that supports VT-IO (intel, not sure of teh AMD version)

then you can passthrough hardware directly into a VM, theres some tricks and workarounds to it depending on your hypervisor/main OS

bluedino
You can't share the screen with RDP, and you have to VPN in, or port forward with NAT...
sixothree
And Remote Desktop Connection Manager...
mandeepj
Don't you need a static IP for using RDP? Not everyone have a static IP
abcd_f
(a bit of port forwarding or VPN) + (VNC or RDP) ?

What you get from TeamViewer/LogMeIn/etc. is the zeroconf aspect of the experience, which in turn is because they provide of a central rendezvous/discovery point. If you know where your peers are, you don't really need an assisted remote management service.

dharma1
Is there anything that uses h265 available for remote desktop?
aroch
Why would you want that? Pretty much no hardware natively support h265 and any bandwidth gains you might get are swamped by the CPU and latency cost with software encoding h265
dharma1
New-ish desktop nvidia GPUs encode h265 natively, my gtx970 does anyway
aroch
Most people don't have newiwsh desktop-class GPUs. Particularly in the enterprise environment most remote desktop programs are born out of
jerelunruh
The best alternative that I've used for end user support is Remote Utilities: https://www.remoteutilities.com/ They have an executable that non-technical users can easily download + run in addition to a version for unattended access.
ben_pr
I use nomachine, works on Linux and Windows. I have a VPN installed at all locations and the software runs behind that.
mutaaf
Chrome Remote Desktop is the best solution I have used. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote-desk...
mieses
It's difficult to configure chrome remote desktop for persistent sharing and autostarting, at least in linux. THen it times out every few minutes asking the local user to continue approving access. It doesn't seem to compete with teamviewer by design.
w8rbt
You should list more detailed requirements. Are the hosts you manage behind network firewalls and/or NAT? Do you expect to be able to initiate requests in, or does the client initiate requests out?
sashk
I've been using join.me and HipChat's builtin screen sharing. Back in days, when I had to manage many Windows hosts, I've used Radmin (https://www.radmin.com/).
creshal
> Can anyone recommend a better remote management solution?

What of teamviewer's features do you need? Screen sharing? Forget RDP. Zeroconf / NAT punching? Forget VNC. And so on…

If the machines already are in a VPN and you don't need screensharing, RDP is probably the most reliable solution.

mylesab
I have been using GoToAssist for around five years to connect to different client machines.
0x0
Maybe you're thinking about Windows (you didn't specify), but if you happen to be on OSX, then a lot of people don't realize that iMessage in Messages.app has screen sharing built in. "Buddies" menu -> "Ask To Share Screen".