MacOS – How to control a Mac through TS-Gateway

macmacosremote desktop

I have a new Mac at the office. We have a pretty closed off firewall here but we allow people to work remotely through a TS-Gateway using RDP. For a client I use iTap as it supports the gateway very smoothly. Now that I've switched to a Mac, I can no longer attach to it remotely. This is a big part of my job, and if I can't figure this out I'll need to go back to MS at the office.

  1. Is an RDP server already running on Mountain Lion?
  2. If so, how do I turn it on?
  3. If not, does Apple Remote Desktop come with one? (I already bought it but I think it's overkill)

Best Answer

Macs share their screens using VNC technology where pictures of the screen are sent as opposed to RDC where drawing commands are sent (primarily). They do not integrate with TS-Gateway out of the box or with any software I've seen.

On the Mac side, you need either a location service (like Back to my Mac or Screens connect client) or a VPN tunnel to get your client past the firewall and back into the local network.

Also on the Mac side, you simply enable either Remote Management or Screen Sharing as both can turn on the VNC server and allow incoming network requests to be served.

Since I put a lot of OR options in the text, here is what you need:

  1. Turn ON VNC in Sharing preference pane
  2. Open VNC ports (or bypass the firewall with NAT/VPN or ssh tunneling) on the Mac and incoming from the network
  3. A VNC client similar to iTap if it does not work with plain VNC implementations.
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