Hello all, We have recently migrated to a completely Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 Enterprise environment and of the many features that Windows 7 brought to the table, one of them caught the eyes of our helpdesk. Remote Assistance with Easy Connect. I have tested this feature off of the corporate network and it works perfectly! However, inside of our corporate network our firewall\router does not support PNRP or UPNP for that matter. Although we are looking into new UTM appliances it seems to be well known that commercial grade routers\firewalls do not support technologies that are similar to UPNP. My question is: 1. Is there a way to manually allow ports or protocol numbers on a router to allow us to use PNRP and Easy Connect? 2. If not, has anyone come up with workarounds (other than using a different firewall) to make Remote Assistance work using Easy Connect? I realize that we can connect directly on the same network using email invitation or shared file but it is much more convenient using the quick connect capability of Easy Connect. WE have other 3rd party remote tools and pay for them but they don't seem to work as well as this when it comes to remote assistance and would rather use the tools that are already given to us. Thanks in Advance.John K. Boslooper Senior Network Administrator Sygnetics, Inc.

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7network/thread/5ee1feac-05c7-4101-8347-102e94b9a06f

Thank you for responding Prachand. I read the article that you sent to me, but it doesn't seem to apply in my case. Here are a few more bits of information regarding my setup. 1. I know that the Remote Assistance on my laptop (and my other systems) works outside of our corporate network. Our firewall is what is not allowing the PNRP traffic through. 2. Our computers are joined to a domain. We don't have a homegroup setup. 3. I tried turning on public folder sharing as suggested in the one response, but I am still not able to connect to the peer-to-peer network. 4. I have run the Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool and everything checks out fine except for the UPNP test which say "Not Run". As stated before, my router does not have provisions for UPNP. 5. The computers in question are not running in virtual envronments nor do they have virtual machines on them. John K. Boslooper Senior Network Administrator Sygnetics, Inc.

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7network/thread/5ee1feac-05c7-4101-8347-102e94b9a06f

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7network/thread/5ee1feac-05c7-4101-8347-102e94b9a06f

Hi John, I think there is no workaround for this issue. I would like to suggest you contact the Router manufacturer to confirm if this router supports PNRP and how to enable it. You may also try to disable the antivirus programs and firewalls, then test the issue in Clean Boot. If the issue persists, you can consider to use the Invitation File to establish Windows Remote Assistance or change another router which can support PNRP. More information: Windows Remote Assistance: frequently asked questions Regards, Sabrina TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees, and confers no rights. |Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi John, How are you? If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to let me know. I am happy to be of further assistance. :) Regards, Sabrina TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.comThis posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees, and confers no rights. |Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Try www.logmein.com and see if it provides what you need. Jerry

Hi Sabrina, I have found out that our router does not support PNRP. If using a native IPv6 network it should work however but we are not able to get an IPv6 network into place at this time. We are currently looking into replacing our UTM appliances for our network and hopefully I will be able to find a happy medium. Thank for your help. -JohnJohn K. Boslooper Senior Network Administrator Sygnetics, Inc.

Try www.logmein.com and see if it provides what you need. Jerry Hi Jerry, We already use logmein. Not the free version but pro. My thing is, why should we pay for additional services and programs to install on all of our machines when Windows 7 already has great simple features built in? Thanks for the suggestion though. -JohnJohn K. Boslooper Senior Network Administrator Sygnetics, Inc.

You can check out the mingleview freeware, its built over PNRP. It can configure & fix PNRP related issues..

You can check out the mingleview freeware, its built over PNRP. It can configure & fix PNRP related issues..