Comfort Automation/ Security System Forums

Hi Home,

Ooh now that\'s an interesting idea!

At the moment (by design) I make the Client a \"single instance application\" such that you can only start up a single copy.

Of course the Client has allowed for multiple startup comfigurations for a while such that you can startup with a command line arguments selecting the config to use. Thus you could have one for each customer but again only one started at a time. If I was to turn off the \"single instance code\" mode though then that would allow you to start up muliple instances of the Client against multiple Comforts I think.... Haven\'t tried that but can maybe test.

To have a Single Client pointing at multiple UCM\'s/Comforts would be possible but the code would need some rework to do that; to support multiple connections I\'d need to tag incoming/outgoing responses/commands with a \"connection ID\" of the particular Comfort system and link a \"Connection ID\" to a floorplan, such that you could have floorplan(s) linked to a particular Comfort System (customer). Not impossible but I\'ve not targetted the Client that way up to now. I\'m intrigued at the possibilities though and I can just visualise Ingo jumping up and down as I type this!!



Julian

Forgot to say though that in your port forwarding then maybe remap your port such that internally say you use 1001 (as needed by UCM) but externally say remap to something else (Eg 21001) and use that port on the Client connection tab (tick overide checkboxes).

I\'ll let the networking boys (Ingo...step forward) comment on whether this increases security or not...!

Regards

Julian

Yes, changing the port from a standard port to a non-standard port helps a little bit but not really. If a hacker has targetted your system it\'s only a matter of time before he get\'s to that port anyway.

Your security should be on the network first and then the application. What I personally do is to VPN into my router and then I have encrypted access over the public network. Once inside my VPN the Client thinks it\'s on the local LAN.

I hope this helps.

Ingo

PS. Yes, using the Client as a Management station does sound like a seperate branch of the Client\'s evolution BUT I think the Client started out to be a single-user application with all the bells and whistles we can squeeze into it. Having Multiple customers connect to it we need to first solve the public access network security issue before we can go any further. Thinking out loud I would think the Client needs to support native SSL/VPN connections to be able to connect securely over the Internet. Obviously the client routers on the other side needs to be SSL/VPN capable.

Thanks

As you may be aware we have been involved with comfort for many years and have many installations all over the country. Very few are monitored remotely but i think if we could come up with a solution that would allow us to monitor multiple installations clients would be interested is a small annual fee for us to do this.

Of course it would have the added benefit that any small setup or programming changes could be remotely handled with the sure knowledge that there already existed a live connection.

Dont forget the clients router also need to have Dynamic IP
A database of users dynamic IPs and details would be useful for this

An annual fee is a good idea, it can help to support Julians continuing work