MeshCentral Blog

MeshCentral offers web based remote desktop, terminal and file transfer allowing administrators to access and remotely manage computers on the local network or over the Internet. So far, we had to relay the traffic from the user’s browser thru the server to the mesh agent on the remote computer creating a lot of traffic on the server which slows down the connections and adds to server workload and hosting costs. To go a long way to solving the traffic relay thru the server problem, last week the latest version of MeshCentral2 was published with WebRTC support turned on by default . This feature is in large part due to many longs days and late night coding sessions by Bryan Roe who worked on fixing and updating BCP’s WebRTC data stack for this usage. With this new version, the Browser and Mesh Agent will attempt to communicate directly to each other using WebRTC bypassing the server entirely. If successful, the remote desktop and terminal session are faster, lower-latency a...

Because MeshCentral is web based and deals with lots of administrative information, it’s important that all traffic be authenticated and encrypted using HTTPS. However, for people setting up their own MeshCentral2 server, obtaining a trusted TLS/HTTPS certificate can be a problem and cost money. Well, this week, the problem is solved by building-in Let’s Encrypt support right into MeshCentral2 . With this latest version ( Currently v0.1.2-s ), you can configure MeshCentral to automatically obtain, use and renew its HTTPS certificate. To use this new feature, you need to have your own MeshCentral2 server setup with a domain name pointing to it. You also need the MeshCentral HTTP server to be accessible over the Internet on port 80 - mapping it to a different port will not work. You can find out how to configure automatic TLS certificates in the latest version of the MeshCentral User’s Guide , we added a new section on Let’s Encrypt. Once setup correctly, MeshCentral will ...

MeshCommander is a web-based Intel® AMT management console that you can download, install and use to connect to and manage your Intel® AMT computers. MeshCommander is over two years old, turning out to be a popular tool. A few days back I published MeshCommander on NPM for easy installation on Linux, OSX and Windows . Most people familiar with NodeJS will know exactly what this means. Enter a new folder and type:     npm install meshcommander     node ./node_module/meshcommander This will start a small MeshCommander web server on any operating system with NodeJS and NPM installed. Then point your browser to http://localhost:3000 which is the default location and you are good to go. Never has it been easier and run MeshCommander on Linux or OSX. I think this is perfect for people using Intel® AMT for IoT and wanting to have a high quality Intel® AMT console. If you want to update to the latest version of MeshCommander, just run the first li...

It’s a new year and MeshCentral2 is moving forward with plenty of new features with the goal of having the first non-Beta version in the first half of this year. MeshCentral is an open source web based remote computer management web site. In the last month, many significant new features where added and an all new User’s Guide packed with installation and configuration help. New updates are released on NPM at a regular cadence (more than once a week). For this last month, here are the big improvements: Email support, verification and account reset capability . This is one of these features that you wish you had implemented years ago. MeshCentral2 can now be configured with a SMTP mail server allowing it to send email messages. Then, we implemented email verification so that when you create an account, the server will send you an email to verify the account is attached to a correct email address. We also added account password reset support. Forgot your password? No longer...

MeshCentral2 provides many features on the web page including remote desktop, files access, remote terminal and much more. However, MeshCentral2 is also a powerful server for connecting any TCP connections over the Internet . This is super useful when doing RDP, SSH, SCP or running any custom tools. Imagine using MeshCentral2 to port map any port on your local computer to any TCP port on any managed computer anywhere on the Internet. This works across proxies, NAT’s and firewalls. Today, I am announcing MeshCentral2 v0.1.0-f on NPM with the new MeshCommand (MeshCmd) tool . The first feature of the new tool is TCP port mapping, and it is multi-OS running on Windows and many variants of Linux. We have a new demonstration video showing how the tool works . The MeshCmd can be downloaded from an installed MeshCentral2 web site, and used to freely route TCP connections. It’s easy to use and has plenty of interesting applications. While MeshCommand is interesting, it hide som...

MeshCommander is a web-based Intel® AMT management console that is available in many versions including as a standalone tool, as part of MicroLMS and built into MeshCentral2 . However, one of the most intriguing versions of MeshCommander is the one that can be loaded directly into Intel® AMT 11.6 and higher flash storage . This version of MeshCommander allows remote hardware management of a computer with nothing else but a browser, making it super convenient for many applications. Never as it been easier to make use of Intel® AMT when you need it. Today, I just released the new MeshCommander firmware loader that comes as a single Windows executable. You can get it on MeshCommander.com , it super easy to use and in less than a minute your Intel® AMT 11.6+ will be upgraded with a powerful management console built right into the computer. Just login using your favorite browser and start remotely managing your computer. As if it could not already be easier, I have a YouTub...

Today, MeshCentral2 is going Beta2 with many more improvements, new features and improved stability. MeshCentral2 is a light weight open source remote computer management web site. In marking this version as Beta2, it broke compatibly with Beta1 and so, everyone will need to create new user accounts, create new meshes and re-install MeshAgents. The compatibly break is going to be annoying for existing users, but was necessary to move MeshCentral2 to the latest cryptographic algorithms. With improvements in both general computing and possibly quantum computers in the years to come, it’s important that any product that will be used in the long term use strong cryptography. Starting with MeshCentral2 Beta2, all hashing is done using SHA384 instead of SHA256 . This means that all node identifiers, certificate signatures, binary update hashes, password hashing and more are all using the new longer and stronger hashing function. This has a wide ranging impact on MeshCentral...