The Joys of Remote Computer Access Using VNC
Newsforge carried an article by Russell Pavlicek earlier this week that discussed the features of VNC and the benefits of using it for remote computer access. VNC is an Open Source application that was developed at AT&T Laboratories in Cambridge, England that provides stateless access to the user interfaces on remote computers. In that regard, it is similar to products like pcAnywhere and CarbonCopy.
However, the most interesting aspect of VNC is its support for non-Windows operating systems, including Linux, a number of variants of BSD and the MacOS, as well as legacy operating systems like OS/2 and VMS. VNC is a client/server technology, meaning that supported operating systems can be accessed remotely, or used to control machines running any supported operating system.
This article sums up VNC well. It gives an overview of the technology, mentions a number of variations of the original OpenSource project, and explains the techniques that can be used to make it more secure so that it can be used to access computers via the Internet.