Connecting to a Remote Computer

Employees can set up their work-from-home computer to connect to an on-campus computer.

This process should be completed on your local computer, which is the one that is off-campus.

Prerequisites

You must first enable incoming remote connections on your remote (on-campus) computer: Enable Incoming Remote Desktop Connections

Instructions

Configure the gateway

If you use the Cisco AnyConnect VPN, you can skip this section.

  1. Open Remote Desktop Connection, which is an app searchable from the Start menu. If you do not have it installed, you can install it from here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remote-desktop-services/clients/windowsdesktop#install-the-client

  2. Expand the options and navigate to Advanced → Settings…

  3. Select Use these RD Gateway server settings:

  4. Under Server name:, enter remote.uconn.edu.

  5. Click OK to save the settings.

Create the connection

  1. Under the General tab, enter the full name of the computer. When you requested a network reservation for your on-campus computer, this name should have been provided to you.

  2. Instead of clicking "Connect," click Save As... to save the connection settings as a shortcut file.

  3. Browse to your desktop and save the shortcut file.

  4. Double-click on this shortcut to quickly launch the connection.

  5. When prompted for your user credentials, enter your UConn email and password.

  6. You will receive one or two Duo prompts. Duo on Remote Desktop only support the app-based push or the phone call methods. It does not support the SMS or hardware token codes. You can update how you respond to prompts on the 2FA portal at netid.uconn.edu.

Configure the Gateway

If you use the Cisco AnyConnect VPN, you can skip this section.

  1. Click the (…) icon in the top left corner and select Preferences….

  2. Navigate to the Gateways tab and click the button to add a new Gateway configuration.

  3. Under Gateway name, enter remote.uconn.edu.

  4. Under User account, select Add User Account… and enter your UConn email and password. Then select Add.

  5. Save and add your Gateway preferences and close the Preferences window.

Create the connection

  1. Click the button and select Add PC.

  2. Enter your full PC name when prompted. When you requested a network reservation for your on-campus computer, this name should have been provided to you.

  3. Select both the user account previously selected and the gateway that was set up.

  4. Select Add and then double click the desktop to connect.

  5. You will receive one or two Duo prompts. Duo on Remote Desktop only support the app-based push or the phone call methods. It does not support the SMS or hardware token codes. You can update how you respond to prompts on the 2FA portal at netid.uconn.edu.

Setting Up the Remmina Remote Desktop

  • Officially Supported Client: Remmina

  • Compatibility: Tested on CentOS/RHEL/Fedora, but should be compatible with all Linux distros.

  • Remmina Installation Guide

For more information about Remmina, visit the Remmina website. 

Configuring the Remote Desktop

  1. Open Remmina.

  2. Click New, denoted by the + icon in the top left corner of the page.

    Remmina new icon.
  3. Select the Advanced tab.

  4. Use the settings shown below:

    • Quality: Best

    • Security: Negotiate

    • Gateway transport type: auto

    • RD Gateway Server: remote.uconn.edu

    • RD Gateway Username: Your NetID

    • RD Gateway Password: Your NetID Password

    • RD Gateway domain: UCONN

      Remote desktop preference screen.
  5. Go back to the Basic tab. Use the settings below:

    1. Name: Use a human-friendly name. This can be a label of your choice.

    2. Protocol: RDP

    3. Server: The full PC name. When you requested a network reservation for your on-campus computer, this name should have been provided to you.

    4. User name: UConn email

    5. Password: UConn email password

    6. Domain: UCONN

  6. Click on Save and Connect.

Alternative: Using the FreeRDP client

The FreeRDP client is an advanced, alternative option for experienced Linux users, and is not officially supported.

  • FreeRDP is not an officially supported client.

  • The FreeRDP client might perform better than Remmina for some Linux users.

  • Compatibility: Tested on Ubuntu 18.04 with X11, but should be compatible with all X11 or Wayland Linux distros.

Installation

FreeRDP can be installed using the package manager for most mainstream distros. Ubuntu users on X11 can install FreeRDP using the command:

sudo apt install freerdp2-x11

 Users using Wayland should install 'freerdp2-wayland'.

For more information about FreeRDP, visit the FreeRDP repository on GitHub or visit the FreeRDP website.

Using the FreeRDP Remote Desktop client

FreeRDP is activated and configured from the command line. Use the following command to start the client, replacing the string COMPUTERNAME and the string NETID as appropriate. The command line will prompt you for your password.

xfreerdp /g:remote.uconn.edu /v:COMPUTERNAME.grove.ad.uconn.edu /gd:UCONN /u:NETID