Provide remote support from your iPhone

The other weekend I was enjoying the weather when I got a call asking for my help to resolve an issue. Of course I was more than willing to help, problem was that I was over an hour away from home and I didn’t have my laptop on me. However I did have my iPhone on me and for once had a strong 3G signal.

Literally days before I was browsing the Apple App Store when I came across iRdesktop. iRdesktop made by ThinStuff is a Remote Desktop Client for Windows Terminal Services or Remote Desktop Services as it is now called in Server 2008 R2. This App is capable of natively using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in order to view and control any PC or Server allowing RDP connections using your iPhone and iPod Touch. To be honest if you search the Apple App Store there are a few Apps offering RDP access but what made this one catch my eye was that it was free.

So the first time I used iRdesktop was in the line of action. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised of how good this App is. First off you can create an unlimited number of predefined connection entries that allow storing the servers details including login credentials, resolution and color depth. Nothing new there but some great additions that can also be stored are the port number, ideal if you secure your RDP sessions by using a different port. You can also enable console mode which is one of my favorite features as I often connect to Media Centre at home and need to use the console to access an app I have installed.

Once connected to an RDP session the first thing you notice is that the session is not scaled to the iPhone screen. You can simply use your fingers to scroll around the edge of the iPhone screen to move to pan to the relevant point of the RDP session. You can rotate your iPhone to change from portrait to landscape and you can even zoom in and out to make the screen easier to read using the familiar iPhone controls. To work within the sessions is relatively simple and somewhat impressive with full mouse emulation using your finger. To left click you just tap the screen, to right click you simply hold your finger down a bit longer. Double click as you can imagine is a couple of quick taps and you can even drag and drop files. To enter text there is a keyboard button at the top of the screen which opens the familiar iPhone keyboard.

A couple of features also worthy of a mention is that it works through WIFI, 3G, HSDPA, GPRS and Edge. I was very impressed with how responsive it was over 3G, with little lag. You can also have multiple connections open at the same time which was useful to solve the problem I dealt with. To change between sessions you are provided with a Safari-like page view for switching. Probably one of the key features for System Administrators will be the fact that irDesktop is compatible with the iPhone's built-in VPN (L2TP, PPTP, IPSec) for secure access to corporate networks as most businesses don’t publish RDP externally.

The only drawback I think the App has is that there is no password security built in, so if someone picks up your iPhone they can connect to any of the servers you have stored. Admittedly you could choose to not store the user credentials and then enter them when the connection is established.

So could you work remotely on your iPhone? Technically yes, though I would not want to use Office products and try to do many hours work on it. However if you need to access a server quickly to resolve an issue it certainly worked for me, and did I resolve the issue? Of course I did.