Advice on Remote Desktop Application

Question

Hi there i recently joined the Microsoft network.

First of all, i'm really thankfull you guys for sharing your knowledge with us. I'm just a student who studies Computer Science and you guys are the reason that i decided to study computer science :). It is my first year so some of my quesitons may be seem silly or irrational and if so i'm really sorry about that.

I've been planning to create a project for Remote Desktop Application. But i have some questions in my mind, hopefully you can answer them.

1. Does .Net is a good choice for this kind of application? To be more specific Can i do it with Visual Studio 2012?
2. Should i be studying on Winsock in order to create a RDA or is there another protocol for that?
3. What are the pros and cons of Winsock?
4. I'm not thinking something big like Teamwiever or other software but a small one to help my family and my friends. So should i rent a server or can i do it with my desktop computer? ( I have fiberoptic connection therefore my connection speed is good so that wouldn't be a problem.)
5. I have no idea about how this process works on the network side. I mean somewhere on the internet i have read an article and it says that i must open some ports in order to communiciate with other computers. Would that be a security vulnerability for me and other PCs? If so what kind of precautions should i take before i start?

Thank you for all your time and replies.
Best Regards.

Answer 1

Welcome Burak,

Your biggest learning will be to set up a server. You will definitely expose your computers, if you mean your fiber optic is internet. You might want to rent a server for security but then you have to set it up. I have been wanting to do something similar and have made little progress being a novice on the server side.

Check out this chat program which opens ports etc. It requires an .exe to run on the server which is the problem you will face. I have run this with my virtual server on my PC it is quite easy. Most rentable servers dont allow it. Thats where using your own computer would come in handy.

Answer 2

Hi there i recently joined the Microsoft network.

First of all, i'm really thankfull you guys for sharing your knowledge with us. I'm just a student who studies Computer Science and you guys are the reason that i decided to study computer science :). It is my first year so some of my quesitons may be seem silly or irrational and if so i'm really sorry about that.

I've been planning to create a project for Remote Desktop Application. But i have some questions in my mind, hopefully you can answer them.

1. Does .Net is a good choice for this kind of application? To be more specific Can i do it with Visual Studio 2012?
2. Should i be studying on Winsock in order to create a RDA or is there another protocol for that?
3. What are the pros an cons of Winsock?
4. I'm not thinking something big like Teamwiever or other software but a small one to help my family and my friends. So should i rent a server or can i do it with my desktop computer? ( I have fiberoptic connection therefore my connection speed is good so that wouldn't be a problem.)
5. I have no idea about how this process works on the network side. I mean somewhere on the internet i have read an article and it says that i must open some ports in order to communiciate with other computers. Would that be a security vulnerability for me and other PCs? If so what kind of precautions should i take before i start?

Thank you for all your time and replies.
Best Regards.

You probably need to read all of the documentation on the page below and the links on the left side of it for Remote Desktop Services. I believe that will answer all of your questions. However it seems from the brief scan of some of the other links that it only works from a server.

Remote Desktop Protocol

And there is this resource too.

Remote Desktop Services Developer Resources

Also I would recommend you keep a copy of this link for getting information on MSDN information. Which has over 10,900,000 links and threads to various information. Code, videos, tutorials, all information using Visual Basic (or other supported code) for anything you can do I suppose. Strings, namespaces, functions, classes, loops, whatever. If you want MSDNs documentation then type in for example Lists followed by MSDN or Strings followed by MSDN or integers followed by MSDN and usually you will get their reference material on the subject as the top links in the list.

MSDN Search

There's also an MSDN Code Gallery with sample code in various languages.

MSDN Code Gallery

And Code Plex too.

Code Plex

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Please BEWARE that I have NO EXPERIENCE and NO EXPERTISE and probably onset of DEMENTIA which may affect my answers! Also, I've been told by an expert, that when you post an image it clutters up the thread and mysteriously, over time, the link to the image will somehow become "unstable" or something to that effect. :) I can only surmise that is due to Global Warming of the threads.

Answer 3

Wow! Thank you @tommytwotrain and @Mr. Monkeyboy for replying such a short notice. Your advices will come in handy that i'm sure. I will check those links you guys provided above, and probably will come back for more questions in future in a different topic :). Thanks a lot, both of you. I really appreciate for your helps.

Edit: I'd like to choose both your answers as an answer but i think it's not how it's works. So i hope i didn't offended anyone.

Edit 2: Ups, turns out i can :) thanks alot.