remote system controller Essays

remote system controller Essays remote system controller Essay remote system controller Essay International Journal of Computer and Information Technology (ISSN: 2279 volume 02- Issue 04, July 2013 RSC Remote System Controller Donfack Kana A. F MadadJim Roland Department of Mathematics, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. e-mail: donfackkana {at} gmail. com 0764) Abstract- The advancement in mobile technology is fast changing the traditional way of computing. Several tasks which were previously performed only on personal computers are now possible with mobile devices. This paper presents RSC, a remote system controller, which is an application to control a remote computer through Java enabled mobile evices such as mobile phone. Basic computer operations such as rebooting, shutting down a remote computer and file transfer from a computer to a mobile device are implemented. Keywords-Mobile application, Remote Computer control, Java networking. l. INTRODUCTION Since the advent of mobile phone, (the first experimental handheld in 1973 by Dr Martin Cooper and first hand-held to be commercially available in 1983 [12] ) mobile technology has not stopped growing, exploring new dimension. According to [6] mobile phones are no longer mean for only voice data communication, but now-a-days the scenario has changed and oice communication is Just one aspect of a mobile phone. Day to day, new technology are incorporated in mobile phones but are less useful in the hands of the users due to lack of applications that will make use of these resources. Handheld devices such as a mobile phone require certain applications and services for their efficient utilization. Since mobile phones, as the name indicates are mobile in nature [10], it will therefore be one of the most efficient way for real time monitoring of non mobile application that require close monitoring. For example, a video surveillance system ecord can be accessed on the communication and data access between mobile and non-mobile devices. Having a mobile device that can be used to access data from a local system from far distance can be of great additional value to individuals and corporations. wrww. iJcit. om Technological developments have enabled the creation of mobile devices with the technical features which were previously conceived only in personal computer (PC) architecture [2]. Those features can be exploited in order to achieve optimal interaction between the PC and the mobile device. The advancements in 36 technology and wireless ommunication bring the convenience usage of mobile devices on internet [2]. These advancements are being used to add more functionality on mobil e devices. As a result, more applications are developed to feed the ever expanding mobile features. This paper develops a Remote System Controller (RSC), which remotely controls a computer system on the internet or local network. II. RELATED WORKS Several applications have been developed for controlling a PC but limited in the type of service they rendered and in the kind of technology used. They include RDM+, TeamViewer, IrDesktop, PocketDroid, VNC among many others. TeamViewer [1 1] is used for remote control, desktop sharing and file sharing between computers. The software operates with the Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android operating systems. Machine running TeamViewer can be accessed with a web browser. In the default confguration, TeamViewer uses one of the servers of TeamViewer. com to start the connection and the routing traffic between the local client and the remote host machine. However in 70% of the cases after the handshake a direct connection via UDP or TCP is established. Virtual Network Computing (VNC) [7] is a graphical desktop sharing system that uses the RFB protocol (remote framebuffer) to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard and mouse events from one computer to another, relaying the graphical screen updates back in the other direction, over a network. VNC is platform-independent. 767 JAVA for the server side application and Android for the client side application. PocketDroid is used for file sharing between PC and android devices, start and stop the applications installed the target PC. Mobile Phone Client-side RSC Sending command Client GUI jrDesktop [4] is a cross-platform software for remote desktop control, remote assistance and desktop sharing. It is useful for home networking, helpdesk, system administration and collaboration. It supports Java 1. 5 and works only on LAN. It uses UDP instead of RMI/ TCP, share only a specific userdefined region. Server Controller System Manager Remote Desktop for Mobile RDM+ [8], is a communication tool that gives the ability to connect to a remote desktop computer through the mobile device and interact with it remotely. RDM+ enables picturing of the remote desktop on he screen of the mobile device and to perform different usual keyboard and mouse commands. In view of the above applications among many others, the technology and languages used in designing these applications differ from one programmer to another; From android platform to Java platform, C# or Visual Basic. Most of the applications developed using Java platform differed from the RSC in the protocols used and a third party, that is, the web for server hosting was used in those applications. Ill. ARCHITECTURE OF RSC RSC uses Java connection-oriented sockets and system ommands to achieve it functionality. Java socket is used in RSC on both the client and server application to provide compatible and efficient streams for the communication between the client and server. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), type of socket was chosen to provide reliable, bidirectional, point-to-point, and stream-based connection between hosts. For the implementation of the system in the RSC system. The internal commands are used to manipulate the files while the external commands are used to perform the computer operations such as shutdown and reboot. The RSC system is made up of a client-side RSC, which runs on the mobile device with Java enabled capability, and a serverside RSC that runs on the PC. The communication link between these two parts of the RSC uses TCP. Fig. l describes the relationship and operation of the two parts of the RSC. File Manager -rcp link Operating System File Manager Control System Disk and File Process Management Receiving Response Figure 1: Basic Architecture of RSC A. Client-side of RSC The client-side of the RSC is divided into two modules as shown in fgure2: the file manager module, responsible for files transfer and esponsible for performing some basic system operations of the remote computer. File Manager Module This module is responsible for sending various requests to the server for files transfer. The operations in this module are dependent of each other. Firstly, the list of all disk drives found on the remote computer is requested, followed by subsequent listing of the contents of selected disk drives. Operations such as copying or deleting a file can be performed on the files. System Manager Module This module controls the remote computer itself by accessing its resources. Commands are sent directly to be executed by he PC, they comprise shutting down instructions, rebooting instructions etc 68 International Journal of Computer and Information Technology (ISSN: 2279 0764) Edition 02SE) platform while the client application is designed using Java 2 Micro Edition 02ME). Start The mobile device running an RSC-client can connect to the remote computer through internet. The RSC-client opens a socket connection to pass required information and commands to the server which in turn executes them. It also receives the response from the server, thus acting like a mobile remote contr ol. Enter Computer Name(lP/DNS) No Successfully Connected? Yes The RSC-client needs to connect to the remote PC through its address which can be an IP address or a DNS name. If RSC is used behind a router, port forwarding should be enabled. Menu Option Help About Disconnect Figure 2: Dataflow of client side RSC B. Server-side of RSC This module, which resides on the computer to be controlled. It is responsible for receiving commands and requests from the mobile side RSC and executes them. The results are sent back to the client application. All processing are performed at this module, making RSC a thin-client model. The communication in the RSC uses the TCP/IP. According to [3] TCP is relatively application-oriented in that using its socket facilities provides applications with a bi-directional byte stream between two hosts located at application endpoints. A connection-oriented service is best for applications that require characters to be received in the same order in which they were sent, such as keystrokes typed from a terminal or bytes in an ASCII file transfer [3]. IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULT The RSC system involves communication between a mobile device and a remote computer, which is based on socket rogramming. RSC is implemented using Java. The choice of java is due it features. Java is platform independent. Because of Java flexibility and robustness, it provides the best deal for the development of such applications. Java platform is widely used Cava platform covers more than 1/3 of mobile devices market). Java programs can be deployed on both mobile devices and non mobile devices, independent of host hardware and operation systems. Client-side and server-side Java applications can integrate seamlessly under consistent Application Programming Interface (API) designs. The server pplication of the RSC was designed using the Java 2 Standard wrww. iJcit. com A. Establishing Connection the RSC, when provided with a valid target PC address, a connection is established between the mobile device and the remote computer on the provided address. A port opened on the remote PC will be listening for incoming data, which will be bound to the mobile device port and so enabling communication between them. Listing 1 and Listing 2 show the pseudo-code for the connection phase. pen a connection through IP on a given port create inputstream and outputstream send request on outputstream ead response on inputstream Listing 1: Clients connection pseudo-code create a socket bind to a well-known port place in passive mode while(true){ wait for client connection request establish a connection with client handle client request create an inputstream and outputstream while(client write){ read a client request on inputstream process request send a reply on outputstream close the client socket close passive socket Listing 2: Servers connection pseudo-code. Upon a successful connection to the server, the mobile user is presented a GUI menu of the RSC where the user can fully interact with the system. 69 B. File Manager The implementation of the file manager is to achieve effective file browser which will enable the user to view the remote computer data content and to perform basic manipulation on these data. Fig. shows a view of the file browser interfaces captured from a mobile The pseudo-code in Listing 3 shows the process used by the server-side program in executing the commands of the file manager module of the client-side. It lists and sends the list of all the drives to the mobile device through a port. Java File class is used in accessing the PC resources. Filet] roots File. listRoots(); for( i i