How to take the control of a remote machine

When i was an amateur in the computer environment i learned a bit of computer troubleshooting stuff. I got a situation where one of my friend is having some issues with his computer performance and some pop-up error messages on the screen. I knew few tricks that might/mightn't fix the issue completely but can be a workaround. There is no chance for me to walk down to his computer to do a bit of troubleshooting coz he is in a remote location. I gave a few suggestions on phone but that didn't worked out. I thought of taking the control of his machine to play around for sometime to help him fix this. To be frank i am really not aware that there is some kind of program that allows us to take the control of remote machine via Internet. Being an amateur at that time i engaged Google to search for some kind of software to take the remote control of the machine. There are a lot of programs which provide the option to control a remote PC.

Only few are interesting and worth trying. Out of them the best are :
1. GoToAssist - This is the product of Citrix corporation. This is the one of my best screen sharing software that i used. we can give a try by downloading the free version for 30 days by following the link http://www.gotoassist.com// .
Just simply install the program and generate a unique session id and direct the other person to put that session id by going to the page http://fastsupport.com//. That's it. The remote computer is only one mouse click away from you.

2. Team Viewer : This is my second best option. we can get a free trial version from the website http://www.teamviewer.com//. It is relatively small executable file that needs to be installed on both the PC which want to involve in screen sharing. This installation doesn't require any kind of admin rights.both the computers should who wants to participate on screen sharing needs to install this. Install this on Remote PC and Your PC as well. Get the session id and password from the remote PC. Create a session and then....Bingo !

3.LogmeIn : It haven't really tried using this tool a lot but this is really good and helpful. Just go to the home page http://www.logmein.com// and give a try.


4.ShowmyPc : It is a good one. Its doesn't require any installation. you can have a try here http://www.showmypc.com//. Like teamviewer the download file is relatively small and no need to install this separately coz it's an executable file.


But all this stuff happens over the internet. If you have a good internet connection these programs are really awesome when working with them. But if your internet connection is a bit slow them you will be a bit annoying when the the other computer takes ages to respond to your mouse gestures and etc....

And another interesting features with these tools are

• File transfer  - This option allows you to transfer the files from your computer to remote computer.
• Chat - We can chat with the other person on the remote location.

Apart from these four there are a Dozens of softwares available. I probably missed some other programs which were better and worth trying.

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Email Flow

Email- Electronic mail is one of the best way to communicate for computer users anywhere in the world. If i wanted to write an email message to my friend who is sitting somewhere in the world, i simply open up my outlook-click on compose-type my friends email address in the to box-mention the subject-draft the message-attach files(if needed)-click on send.That's it. This is what i do to send an email to my friends.Not only me, all the computer users will do the exact same thing.But for most of the time i didn't know how the mail flow takes place.How the transfer takes place and how will it reach the recipient and the intermediate process and so on....
In this post i am presenting you the basic scenario of the mail flow which i learned in the recent days. Hope you will find a bit use full
There are a few new keywords we need to look into......
1. MUA - Mail User Agent. MUA is the email client which we use to create-draft-send emails. Generally Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird,Kmail and so on....... are examples of MUA's

2.MTA - Mail Transfer Agent. Message.Mail transfers between sender(s) and recipient(s) will take place between the MTA's. Exchange, Qmail, Sendmail, PostFix and so on.... are example of MTA's

3.SMTP : Simple Mail Transfer Protocol will transfer the mails between the MTA's

Lets take a deeper look into this with a small example. The below picture will depict how mail flow takes place between sender and recipient

From the above picture, When the sender clicks on Send in his MUA, the mail will be transferred to the MTA of the sender which exists in the Mail server of the Sender. The MTA of the sender will check for the recipients address( MX records-Mail Exchange Records) and if it finds the recipients address then the mail will be flowed from Senders MTA to Recipient MTA using the SMTP Via TCP Port 25. Once the Recipients MTA receives the email, it will be transferred to MUA of recipient. Once the Recipient Clicks on the Send/Receive button then the email will be once click away from him residing in his inbox.

In addition to the above processes there is another agent called as MDA-Mail delivery agent. MDA will receive the email from the MTA and will deliver it the the recipients MUA.

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DNS

In day today life most of the people use the Internet for browsing websites. Out of them many people don't know hoe exactly the background process takes place to let them browse the websites. We simply type the name in the address box of a browser and we hit on the enter key, then the browser will display the information stored in that website. But browsing a website is nothing but connecting to a computer and getting the information from it. But, well all knew that every computer is uniquely identified with a series of numbers (called as IP Address). Then how we are able to connect to another computer and get the information by simply typing the human readable website address in the browser but not the IP address.? There comes the service called as DNS. Usually stands for Domain Name System. In the other way we can call it as Name Address Resolution. Coz, it converts human readable names to computer readable numbers and vice verse.
For example, About 99 percent of people use google.com every day. we simply punch the google.com name in the address box and hit the return key and them the browser will takes us to the google.com page. But as soon as we hit the enter key the DNS service will comes into play and will convert google.com to IP address 209.85.153.104.

If you are a bit curious to know about IP addresses of the websites that you use daily, then go to command prompt and type ping followed by the website address. There is another way find it from your Mozilla FireFox browser. Download the Add-on ShowIP from addons.mozilla.com. After You install the add-on you can see the IP address of the website at the bottom right corner of your browser.

Still a lot more to learn about DNS !!.

Follow this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System

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