Overview - About Remote Connections

Overview

Devices on CloudLink are all on the same logical network, and thus can communicate with each other via traditional networking protocols such as TCP, UDP and ICMP. End-users have two ways they can manage devices on CloudLink via the network:

• Using remote management tools as a Wireguard peer: End-users can join the CloudLink network as a Wireguard Peer and use traditional remote management protocols such as SSH, VNC and RDP using local applications, such as PuTTY, VNC and Remote Desktop for Windows, respectively. This approach requires end-users to have correct local firewall settings, as well as locally installed applications present.
• Using CloudLink Tunnels in the browser: CloudLink allows you to interactively utilize the SSH and VNC protocols through the browser. This removes the requirement for end-users to have to adjust firewall settings, open ports, and install local applications.

INFO

CloudLink Tunnels are the recommended way to manage remote devices, as they are significantly easier to use for end-users. Note that users wanting to perform file exchange over SSH (using the "SCP" protocol) must use traditional methods, as file transfer is not yet supported via CloudLink Tunnels.

Supported protocols

Any tools that utilize the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP) or the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) should work over CloudLink.

CloudLink Tunnels

Through CloudLink Tunnels, end users can utilize the SSH and VNC protocols through their web browser.

Secure Shell (SSH)

CloudLink Tunnels supports both password-based and key-based authentication mechanisms.

Things to be aware of

• Some SSH servers allow connecting clients to set both the timezone (TZ) and locale (LANG) environment variables for the session. In CloudLink, all tunnel sessions are established under the UTC timezone. For the locale, the default settings in the server will be used.
• The CloudLink Tunnel will not send SSH keepalive packets to the server. As such, the server is able to fully determine the duration of connecting clients.

Unsupported SSH features

• The usage of private keys that are password protected.
• "Passwordless" authentication, which is sometimes seen in network appliances such as SANs.
• Connecting via keys in unsupported key formats. See Supported Key Formats for more information.

Virtual Network Computing (VNC)

CloudLink Tunnels supports the password-based VNC authentication mechanism.

Things to be aware of

• VNC servers don't offer the option for clients to specify display sizes, meaning CloudLink relies on the server's settings for width and height.
• Even though CloudLink consistently utilizes UTF-8 for its clipboard data, and the Code Editor utilizes UTF-16, adherence to the VNC standard mandates clipboard data to be encoded in ISO 8859-1. Since the majority of VNC servers solely accept data in this format, CloudLink facilitates the exchange by translating between UTF-8 and ISO 8859-1 for clipboard data. Please note that non-Latin characters, especially those in the extended Unicode planes, may not translate correctly under all conditions.

Unsupported VNC features

• "Passwordless" and anonymous authentication.
• VNC repeaters, such as UltraVNC Repeater.
• Audio transmission over VNC.
• Reverse VNC connections, where servers initiate the connection to clients.