pcAnywhere and satellite communications links

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pcAnywhere and satellite communications links

Situation:
You want to use pcAnywhere over an orbital satellite communications link.

Solution:

Note: Symantec does not support the use of pcAnywhere versions prior to 11.0 over 802.11b or higher wireless network connections. Previous pcAnywhere versions are only supported when used on a physical, hard-wired network. Information in this document is provided as a convenience, and does not indicate support or endorsement by Symantec. Use this information at your own discretion and risk.

pcAnywhere remote control sessions are not supported over satellite communication links using TCP/IP or any other network protocol. With TCP/IP over a satellite link, PING times are in excess of 1800-3000 milliseconds. This is too slow for pcAnywhere to function effectively. Connections at these speeds are, at best, sporadic. File transfers may be possible, but remote control is unlikely.

The only adjustment you can make to pcAnywhere that might improve your chances of functioning over a satellite link is to increase the Winsock buffer size. You can do this by adding the registry value TCPIPWSDataBuf and setting it to a high value. Instructions for adding this key are in the document pcAnywhere registry keys.

Note: This adjustment is not recommended or supported by Symantec.

For additional information on troubleshooting TCP/IP connections, please see the document Troubleshooting pcAnywhere TCP/IP connections.

In situations such as over satellite or slow TCP/IP connection, the use of pcAnywhere Encoding on the Host and Remote computers will help by introducing another layer of error checking/correction. To enable this feature on the Host and Remote computers, refer to the documentation for the product version(s) that you are using.

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Document ID: 1999070213192012
Last Modified: 05/18/2005
Date Created: 07/02/1999
Operating System(s): Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP
Product(s): pcAnywhere 10.0, pcAnywhere 10.5, pcAnywhere 11.0, pcAnywhere 9.0