I have a client who is remote. I need to debug some weird problem that none of my other clients are having. Before I try and set up a conference with this client, I would like to know if there is some way of remotely debugging our application.
I see that there are remote debugging tools available for Visual Studio, but from what I've read, I need to be on the same subnet. As the person is remote, this is not a possibility. Also, as I'd like to keep our connection secure, I would need to connect up some sort of encrypted tunnel (this is where I'm a little fuzzy as my networking skills are mostly theoretical).
As I understand it, an encrypted tunnel is a bridge to another (different) subnet. This is to ensure that those computers on the other side won't interfere with the local subnet computers.
So, because the client's computer is on a different subnet, I think that this is not possible. Or is it? Should there not be a way of making the client's computer show up as a virtual computer on my subnet, by forwarding packets from one subnet to another? I would think that this is theoretically possible, but I'm not exactly sure how I would go about this.
Also, at the moment, my current way that we connect to clients is through GoToMeeting, but I don't think that it supports tunneling. If not, then I may need some way of generating a tunnel, so I was also thinking of maybe using some SSH programme like PuTTY.
As I have said before, my knowledge of networking is quite theoretical, so if the tools that I am suggesting are not the correct ones, please correct me. (I'm a programmer, damm it! Not a network engineer!)
Both computers are Windows boxes. Windows 10 (client) and Windows 8.1 (development).
If you can connect to an ssh server in the remote network, you can (subject to configuration on the server) create a tunnel such that you connect to a socket on your local pic and the connection appears from the server to an endpoint on the remote network.
You'll want to investigate the -L command of OpenSSH, which combined with the PuTTY docs, should help explain what's required.
By default, the endpoint would be a port on the ssh server, but it could be a port on a different host that the remote server can connect to.
I'm not familiar with the current state of Windows SSH servers, but even if there isn't a system server to hand, you should be able to have on run 'on demand' - if you run it on a non-privileged port and by the user you want to connect in as, it shouldn't even need Admin privileges.
I'm not familiar with GoToMeeting, but the one thing with SSH tunnelling it that IT depts should be familiar with SSH. If trying that, focus on getting a working connection in, then setting up the tunnel, then connecting through it as separate steps.
Once you have an SSH connection, then it doesn't need to do something itself, and you can then investigate connecting while specifying the port forwarding, but will will need to get the basic connection working correctly first.