Returning champion pcAnywhere (see "Remote Control Saves Steps"), almost made it to the top of the heap for its first-rate performance, security and support for multiple directory schemes--including Active Directory, LDAP, NDS and NTLM--but it was foiled by its high price and NetSupport Manager's strong management capabilities.
In the performance category, pcAnywhere ranked third in our bitmap-transfer test and fourth in file transfers. It also packs a lot of features into a small memory footprint. Although the host code consumes 6,824 KB while dormant, it uses only 7,996 KB while active (see graphic "Memory Usage in Remote Control"). But pcAnywhere was not quick to identify communication problems between clients and hosts, taking approximately 49 seconds to sense a broken connection.
Still, pcAnywhere is easy to install in any type of environment. We tested several installation methods, including a Web-based installation, which is a hassle-free and reliable solution for enterprise deployment. We were pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to customize an installation using the packager option. This took the pain out of manually editing an installation file, and pcAnywhere's packager lets you create your own installation set, providing control over which features are available to the user, including protocol support and which, if any, dialog boxes are displayed during installation. We also successfully tested the "rebootless" host option, which let us create a host-installation package that did not require a host reboot after the software installation.
PcAnywhere had the most security features of the products we tested. New to version 10.5 is a host-assessment tool that checks the configuration of hosts and alerts administrators of possible security issues. It includes enhanced logging capabilities for security events that can trigger SNMP traps or log events in its own format for reporting purposes. A remote-access perimeter scanner let us identify pcAnywhere hosts in our network and scan for other installed remote-control software. And it includes an option to shut down unsecured hosts. However, no criteria were provided to define insecure.
As with many of the products we tested, pcAnywhere provides multiple levels of encryption and authentication. It also includes IP-based connection restrictions and file-integrity checking to prevent unauthorized copies of the software. This enforces standard configurations in the enterprise and protects specific critical files from being overwritten. Furthermore, you can narrow the risks of unauthorized access by limiting connections through the use of a serialization code.
The Windows Explorer-style file transfer is as good as it gets. We could take over remote-control sessions without stopping the file-transfer process, and pcAnywhere, like LapLink, provides autotransfers and folder-synchronization options with delta-transfer technology.
Dilip Advani, Saurabh Bhasin, Julio Caraballo and Bilson M. Poikayil are research associates at Syracuse University's Center for Emerging Network Technologies. They can be reached at dadvani@syr.edu, sbhasin@syr.edu, jcarabal@syr.edu and bmpoikay@mailbox.syr.edu. Sean Doherty is a technology editor and lawyer based at our Syracuse University Real-World Labs®. A former project manager and IT engineer at Syracuse University, he helped develop centrally supported applications and storage systems. Write to him at sdoherty@nwc.com.
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