Tested MC the last two days. Most of the things work perfectly and i might consider switching to MC.

The only thing that bothers me right now is the WAN performance. How is it going for you guys? If i connect to a remote computer over WAN the video frame is super laggy (i guess like 1 fps). I open a txt on the remote machine and i basically see the text editor only 3 seconds later.

Is this normal?

@Ylian said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

@vpr00 If you want to be completely evil... you can try on your server /createLoginToken.ashx?user=(username)&pass=(password) and it will return a login token. It's evil because passing credentials in a URL like this is really bad. Often URL's are logged and so your password is in event logs. This said, people kept wanting me to add this feature...

Of course it would be better if I could create login tokins on the business server or if i would just have 1 non time-limited login token but i can live with your suggestion for testing purposes for now.

Id be very happy to be able to generate login token on my business server sometime in the near future though.

I think people are wanting it because they are generally doing the necessary security measures before even exposing the option to access MeshCentral. So at that point they want a quick and easy way to login a user which is already a trusted user on their side.

Thanks for your fast reply as always!

@Ylian said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

I am running way behind on documentation. On embedding, let me know what server type will be the master (NodeJS, ASP.NET...). Once you get MeshCentral running, get the --loginTokenKey and cut and paste it into your server. Then, if the master server is NodeJS, use this code to generate a time limited cookie on your server and use it as documented. The user name is "user/(domain)/(account name in lower case)", the sample below is for "admin" on the default domain. hope it helps until I get time to work on documentation.

obj.crypto = require('crypto');
obj.encodeCookie({ u: 'user//admin', a: 3 }, obj.loginCookieEncryptionKey)

// Encode an object as a cookie using a key using AES-GCM. (key must be 32 bytes or more)
obj.encodeCookie = function (o, key) {
    try {
        if (key == null) { key = obj.serverKey; }
        o.time = Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000); // Add the cookie creation time
        const iv = Buffer.from(obj.crypto.randomBytes(12), 'binary'), cipher = obj.crypto.createCipheriv('aes-256-gcm', key.slice(0, 32), iv);
        const crypted = Buffer.concat([cipher.update(JSON.stringify(o), 'utf8'), cipher.final()]);
        return Buffer.concat([iv, cipher.getAuthTag(), crypted]).toString('base64').replace(/\+/g, '@').replace(/\//g, '$');
    } catch (e) { return null; }
};

Thanks for your fast reply. My master server is running python and im not sure if i can replicate your piece of code in python.

Anyway, thanks for your reply. I see youre busy with other features and i dont want to take too much of your time away.

Maybe there is some python/crypto expert on here which can translate your code to phyton?

I mean, for my needs it would be suitable if i could easily create one login token without time limit. I think a feature like this would be easily implemented on your side but im not sure if that would be against your security model?

@scottalanmiller Ive got everthing working besides the issue i described. works pretty good otherwise.

Anyone tried embedding MC yet?
Ive got it working but im not sure about how to automatically generate login tokens.
As per the manual (http://info.meshcentral.com/downloads/MeshCentral2/MeshCentral2UserGuide-0.2.1.pdf) i generated a "LoginTokenKey" but i cant understand how i can generate login tokens out of that key. Anybody has experience with this?

As far as i understand the business server can be used to generate those, but how? My business server is running on phyton if that matters.

@Ylian: Is the user guide missing some information on how to generate a login token from a login token key or am i missing something here?

@scottalanmiller said in MeshCentral Performance Testing:

When you get back and have time, let us know how your MC is set up. What it is running on, what OS, configuration, physical location to the server, clients, and from where you are accessing it. Stuff like that. And what MC version.

Tested a bit more, now its working a lot better. I think i forgot to restart the server yesterday after changing to WebRTC. Performance and Quality seem to be on the same level as teamviewer now, which is great.

I have two more points id like to ask you about though:

1. Sometimes after i press connect, half of the image loads and it wont load any further. I have to press disconnect and connect again until it works. Have you experienced the same? It only happens with WebRTC though.
2. As far as i understand WebRTC, if peer-to-peer via the STUN server doesnt work, WebRTC switches to a relay server (TURN). How does MC proceed in the case when STUN doesnt work? I think we have a TURN-server in our company i could use. Where can i specify the url, credential and username of that TURN-server? In the config.json there seem to be only a place for STUN-servers.

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

@vpr00 said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

@vpr00 said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

Tested MC the last two days. Most of the things work perfectly and i might consider switching to MC.

The only thing that bothers me right now is the WAN performance. How is it going for you guys? If i connect to a remote computer over WAN the video frame is super laggy (i guess like 1 fps). I open a txt on the remote machine and i basically see the text editor only 3 seconds later.

Is this normal?

I use the "experimental" peer to peer method that greatly improves performance.

WebRTC? Seems like it doesnt change anything performance wise for me. I just want to know if its normal or if the probem is on my side.

Yes, WebRTC and we noticed a performance boost when using it (it lowers latency.) But in neither case was my performance bad like you were describing. Mine is quite responsive.

We host our server on Vultr, very cheap and helps ensure performance because of the high bandwidth and low latency of the datacenter.

Are you connecting to remote clients in the same country or region?

Yes, same country. I will post a video of my performance and my settings later when im home. Would be happy to have your thoughts on this then. Thanks for your reply!

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

@vpr00 said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

Tested MC the last two days. Most of the things work perfectly and i might consider switching to MC.

The only thing that bothers me right now is the WAN performance. How is it going for you guys? If i connect to a remote computer over WAN the video frame is super laggy (i guess like 1 fps). I open a txt on the remote machine and i basically see the text editor only 3 seconds later.

Is this normal?

I use the "experimental" peer to peer method that greatly improves performance.

WebRTC? Seems like it doesnt change anything performance wise for me. I just want to know if its normal or if the probem is on my side.

Tested MC the last two days. Most of the things work perfectly and i might consider switching to MC.

The only thing that bothers me right now is the WAN performance. How is it going for you guys? If i connect to a remote computer over WAN the video frame is super laggy (i guess like 1 fps). I open a txt on the remote machine and i basically see the text editor only 3 seconds later.

Is this normal?