Hi - and welcome to our brief guide
to configuring and using the NetSupport Gateway.
It is probably appropriate to start by
confirming the purpose of the NetSupport Gateway.
It is used for a number of products supplied by NetSupport -
first and foremost for NetSupport Manager remote control.
The gateway acts as an intermediary
where we want to have access from the control software
(that is the software used on any PC
or mobile tablet
that we wish to perform remote control from)
through to any computer that has the NetSupport client installed.
And that is installed on each PC that we wish to be able to perform
remote control on.
In a normal network environment, the control can browse the local network
via TCP/IP,
discover clients and connect to them.
There is a differet scenario, of course,
when the control user is on the road on their laptop - or we want to manage
computers at different sites
where the only communication between them
is the internet.
So the gateway acts as a secure intermediary,
allowing traffic,
as http,
to pass securely through the gateway to allow us to identify
and connect to NetSupport Manager remote clients.
At the current time, you will see the gateway console
is empty; there are no connected clients to it.
So, having installed the software for the first time,
what we need to do is step our way through the configuration options.
If we select our file, you will see we have a "Configure Gateway" option.
That will present us - when we say "yes" -
with our main configuration utility.
The first page is really specific to networking requirements.
Most of these options you should not need to modify - unless you have some
specific requirements - but we will touch on the key items.
So one key item is the default port
that our gateway will be listening on.
By default, it is set to 443
but, depending on your network requirements, if you wish
you can modify the port to suit your own requirements.
Similarly, you can also choose to specify specific IP interfaces and ports
that you wish to be listening on.
At the bottom,
we have a reference to our event log. As you would expect from a
communications gateway,
we have the ability to record a detailed audit trail
of each and every connection and activity that occurs through the gateway.
Again, here, you can control the location of that event log file
and, if you wish, you can set limits on to the maximum size that log file can grow to.
The first tab we move along to is our "Keys" tab.
As you would expect, we want some mechanism
for controlling
who can and cannot access and communicate through the gateway.
Now, the gateway keys
are entered and defined here
in the configuration utility.
Then, a reply to each client that we wish to give access to -
so that it can be
visible on the gateway.
Similarly, that key is used by an operator using the control software
to give them the ability to actually connect and browse the gateway
for available computers.
To add a key,
we simply provide a description
and then choose to set a gateway key
where we can specify
that key information.
Once set, you will see we now have one key.
It is important to note we can have multiple gateway keys here.
These can be used to segment which clients are visible to which operators.
So the gateway can also be used not just for one organisation,
but potentially can be used
where we are providing remote support services to a number of different offices
or organisations.
Similarly, we have an "Operator" tab.
The operator's tab allows us to add an extra layer of granularity
and control to the gateway usage.
In essence, we can specify user names and passwords for
individual staff or
helpdesk operators who have access to the gateway.
Again, we can then control specifically who can be authenticated
and utilise the gateway.
So we can either restrict access
and only allow specific operators.
And, if we do that, we are prompted to add an operator name
- a full name - and, of course, a password for each user.
If we have that option unchecked,
then we are utilising the key
to control behaviour that is coming in and out of our gateway.
We have a third option, which is our "Redundancy" tab.
Now, if our gateway is our central intermediary point
that is allowing communication from
inside or outside of our network to remote computers,
we do have the ability to build in some redundancy to the product
and allow the gateway to operate as a secondary gateway.
In essence, if we select this option
we can specify the IP address and port details of the primary gateway.
If, for some reason, the primary gateway becomes unavailable,
this secondary gateway will take over as the primary gateway for a duration
and any clients and controls will automatically redirect
to the secondary gateway.
So this allows us to build in a level of redundancy into the product.
Within our licence management console, you will see that we have our current
10-user NetSupport Manager evaluation licence currently installed.
This will allow a maximum of
10 PCs to connect to the gateway at any given time.
But of course we can
add in here our
permanent purchase licence.
In addition, we could stack multiple licences that are available.
Finally, under our "Security" tab, you can see that we can force encryption
for all communications that are accessing and coming through our gateway.
We can also block any computers that do not have encryption enabled
to ensure that, at all times, security is maintained.
That is the extent of the gateway configuration utility.
Most organisations of a large size
will pay post their gateway,
most typically on the DMZ
alongside things like their web server, mail server
and database servers
so that
it is accessible from the outside world and will securely pass through data into
the secure inner network.
For smaller organisations, the most typical approach is to install the gateway
on any target PC
and then use port forwarding or NAT
on their firewall or router to pass traffic through for a given port
directly through to the gateway machine.
OK. So with our gateway configured, let us take a quick look at how we ensure that
our NetSupport Manager clients and controls can utilise it.
If we go to our NetSupport Manager program group and we open our configurator
on our PC, you will see we have a basic and an advanced mode of configuration.
We will go to the advanced mode and we will edit the master profile
and you will see we have all sorts of configuration options that are available
for NetSupport Manager - and these are covered
within our main NetSupport Manager product tour.
If we go to the http tab,
you will see that for our client we have the ability to use http,
and here we specify the IP address of the gateway that we have just set up
with a matching port.
For the redundancy option, we can
specify a secondary gateway address -
and, again, its port.
Finally, we can add our gateway key to authenticate us
and ensure that we are able to actually connect to the gateway.
Once we apply those settings and we click "OK",
it will restart our client
and it will then be communicating through our gateway.
If we look at the control software that is used to perform remote control -
we can open that control software
and you will see down here we have an "Internet Gateways" option.
If we select that option, we can double-click and add a gateway,
give it a description -
NetSupport as a name, and description.
Click "Next" -
and, again, we can enter the IP address and port of our gateway.
Let us put 10.0.01 in,
just so we can skip through the options
And then the address of our secondary gateway -
we can choose if we are using a proxy server -
and then, finally, we can set and add our gateway key.
Once we have done that - we will create the key in here just so that it knows we
are completing the process,
like so.
And we say "Next".
We can again now specify a user name and password.
You will remember we had the option in our gateway configuration for not just a gateway key,
but also individual user authentication.
So this is where we will enter that user authentication.
When we finish, you will note we now have a gateway available to us that we can
browse to discover any new computers that are available to us.
It is as simple as that.