Hi, I tried to search for this topic. But, I couldn't find anything relavent. Anyway, if this is a repost, filed wrong, or even a silly question, I apologize. Now on to the question...

At an old job, port 22 was open, out bounded. I opened 389 on my home laptop. I would rdp into my home laptop and cruise the web. I did this because of obvious reasons.

What if a host was to provide a service like this? Would you think there is a market for it. If so, how much would you pay as a customer. How much would you charge as a host?

In my normal job, I work in an enterprise environment (bofh here). I would imagine that this would be just another locked down desktop will a little space to save files and sitting behind a proxy limiting the users from the really really naughty stuff (read: cp and other compromizing stuff). The only difference is that I would sell this as a service.

One more thing comes to mind. I could certainly imagine this being a security issue, if not done right. Besides that, would you think this is a good idea or really stupid? If I just gave you a great idea for a new product, let me know how it turns out.

Opinions?

That is such a coincidence.
I received a newsletter yesterday of a company introducing
something simulair.

Looked up the URL, dutch site, but it seems there are people
offering this :)

https://www.inmeso.nl/producten/windows-vps-vds/desktop-vps

So you are thinking of providing terminal services plans to end users?

I suppose there is a product there, perhaps something down the line of terminal services, citrix xenapp, citrix xendesktop or something are all possibilities.

So you are thinking of providing terminal services plans to end users?

I suppose there is a product there, perhaps something down the line of terminal services, citrix xenapp, citrix xendesktop or something are all possibilities.
Well yes, I want to offer a private desktop via terminal services. However, I want to leave Citrix out of it. I do not have the capital to purchase and offer Citrix hosting. :(

After a bit of thought, I was wondering what type of hosting could this be called? I would call it VPN...but I am cutting access off at the desktop. I do not want the users to have access to the rest of my network.

Thoughts?

After a bit of thought, I was wondering what type of hosting could this be called? I would call it VPN...but I am cutting access off at the desktop.

Well, VPT's, Virtual Private Terminals ? :P

Something like this?

https://secure.logmein.com/US/solutions/personal/access/

What about reliability and robustness of the service?
what measures are you taking?

James,

This service exists and is being offered by a number of companies.

The issue many of them face is resource abuse, as resources are difficult to limit per user. Example being bandwidth, many clients will pay for this service in hopes of downloading/uploading large files at fast speeds. Unfortunately, this small market usually results in a large number of illegal/illegitimate clients.

My past experience has shown that some clients will use the service to DoS other servers, hack, commit fraud, and download/upload warez files to Rapidshare and other file sharing services.

In 2008, I offered this service to several clients for about 6 months. Things eventually got out of control, and I decided to stop.
Since then I have been looking for someone to partner with and to try this again.

I once gave people access to my windows server through the windows remote desktop I simply added new users on the server but as mentioned above there were a lot of abuses mostly illegal torrenting and I was cheesed off because I was giving it out for free anyways forget that

Another way I found was to have vpses made on my server with a windows OS and people can access that through rdp

But I'm not exactly sure if that is what you want to achive hope I helped ya

Dunno, maybe I'm wrong but you need to create a service with a point of difference. Eg. Offering an application service, like Citrix does, or you're offering a desktop to work with Microsoft exchange or visio, or word for instance.

Your target market I assume could be businesses.

Using this type of windows desktop, rather than using a proxy, to do the same thing - Can't see how you'd sell that, without getting bomabarded with all the fraudulent credit card orders under the sun. Folks that want to use proxy services, generally usually look around for free proxies to abuse, where they remain anonymous.

what about Terminal Server Licensing ? as far as i know windows server allowed only 2 Remote Desktop Connection ,

Not when you run terminal services as a service, with license server etc.

You can enable a Windows server as your TS license server where your TS CALs exist and connect TS servers to that license server.
If you are running your own virtual servers, you will need to follow Microsoft licensing (if you go with Windows). A license of Server 2003 Enterprise allows up to four virtual instances. In addition, each user or device would need a Windows server user CAL.
Windows licensing gets expensive quickly with the OS license(s) then user CAL and TS CAL per TS session.
I've never offered this but I would assume you would want a good AV solution, too!

Thanks to everyone for taking time to reply.

Yes, at first, I wanted to use a Windows solution. But I would require a TS license server and CALs per connection. I am not sure that it would make a good investment. The TOC seems to be high, when factoring in the CALs. I have a feeling that it would take a special kind of customer to subscribe to this service. So the ROI would be slow to return, despite that Windows is the most popular desktop out there.

However, I think that desktop hosting is still novel. I might consider doing some type of Gnome/KDE desktop hosting. The startup cost would be lower than compared to the Windows counter part.

If I could go with a Windows solution, I would probably use SEP. Its what we use here at work. However, I would need a good virus solution for Linux, ClamAV comes to mind.

Thoughts?

Check out:

http://g.ho.st/

I signed up, and it seems like a pretty cool idea for a virtual computer. If any of you want to help me out and help me get more GB in space, pm me your email address and i'll invite you from my account. :)

I have a friend who does this : - )

http://evenoverhere.com/

I believe it is the type desktop hosting you are referencing. Maybe they can provide you with information.

Thats great, some of big case come from extraordinary's idea