CrossTec's NetOp Version 7.0

Any time we perform a comparative review, some worthy products are left out because of the limitations of reviewer time and magazine space. When we left CrossTec's NetOp out of our remote control shootout, many of its fans wrote to tell us we'd left out a winner. The company recently shipped Version 7.0, adding a few new features, including encryption and a better browser-based client. If the new version of NetOp had been in the previous review, it would have scored well against its rivals, tying with Carbon Copy for second place.

NetOp offers the full array of connection options, including TCP/IP, NetBIOS, IPX and dial-up. Setting up the product is as simple as installing the software and answering a few questions. There are several outstanding features, some of which have been with the product for a few versions.

First, NetOp can be set up as a gateway host, meaning it can handle several incoming connections from modem and network users concurrently (Carbon Copy and ControlIT also allow this). Second, the chat feature immediately displays the text as it is being typed - other products only send a line at a time, after the user presses the enter key.

This is a small point, but it can be helpful when fast typists are communicating. There is also a markup pen that lets users draw on the screen to highlight different areas, something found in whiteboarding products but not usually in remote-control software. This feature is useful if a support person needs to show a user where to find a menu or command.

Also added to Version 7 is a Linux remote client and improved logging options. But the biggest improvement is the encryption features. These allow very detailed control over how communications between remote client and host will be secured. For example, you can turn off encryption entirely and then NetOp Version 7 hosts can communicate with older version clients. You can encrypt all data communications, or just keystrokes, between two PCs. The encryption tab under the guest-access security menu goes into more detail. These screens explain which elements of the connection will be secured, a nice feature if security is a major concern.

What about the Internet?

NetOp uses a special NetOp name server to locate your host computer, although like its competitors, you still need to open a port on your firewall to let communications go through. You can also set up your own name server on your local network if you are concerned about security and restrict access to your own corporate users.

We had some trouble with the new browser-based client, which uses a set of three files to run ActiveX control inside Internet Explorer Version 4.1 or better. On one Windows 98 test machine, despite changing the various ActiveX security settings in IE, we couldn't start a session.The feature worked fine on other machines running other operating systems. The browser client seemed to be a better performer than other browser clients from competing vendors, although we didn't benchmark this.

We also liked the overall snappy feel of NetOp: Graphics came up quickly over our Internet connection. We thought NetOp was as fast - if not faster - than pcAnywhere and Carbon Copy, with performance over a local Ethernet equivalent to sitting in front of the host.

Documentation was superb, and the manual was almost too complete. At 500 pages, it was probably the thickest, remote-control program manual we've seen. The manual could go into more detail delineating the difference between Internet and TCP/IP connection type, but that's a minor point. Every option and menu command is illustrated with copious examples.

Deploying NetOp on a corporate network can take several forms, and there are a variety of tools that come with the product to help. New to this version is improved integration with various database servers, although getting this setup properly is difficult and will take careful review of the numerous steps involved as documented in the manual - this was about on par with its competition. Network administrators can take advantage of user authentication services provided by Windows Active Directory or NT Domain controllers so that you don't have to duplicate access control lists and groups with NetOp. You can also take advantage of a "silent install" similar to ControlIT.

This lets NetOp be deployed around a corporation without any active user intervention on its individual desktop computers.

Overall, NetOp is a fine competitor to the remote-control market. We recommend making use of the extra NetOp Security Server to set minimum password lengths and other security parameters. And you can't restrict individual users to particular folders, unless you set that up through their user rights on the host machine outside of the software. But these are minor quibbles. Overall, the product works and performs well.

Strom is the author of numerous product reviews, essays, opinion pieces and feature stories for dozens of computer trade publications and technical Web sites. His second book, Home Networking Survival Guide, was published this fall. He can be reached at david@strom.com.

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Network World, 08/20/01.