DWService | Staff News

We provide a free & open source service that allows access to remote systems using a standard web browser.

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A better experience for our users

At DWService, we've been working hard to improve your experience when accessing your remote desktops from any modern browsers, wherever you are in the world.

Here is a roundup of the latest work projects we've achieved.

A better experience with full colors.

Previously, when rendering your remote desktops, our application relied on a homemade custom compression algorithm based on a 16-bit color palette.

You might have noticed that in some cases the color range was a bit low and was not true to the actual desktop. Only 65,536 colors were available and this is affected the experience as a whole. So we decided to move to JPEG compression.

With JPG the RGB input pixels are converted to a different colour space (YCbCr) in which luminance (Y) becomes a major element. This is because the human eye is more able to process luminance variations than color changes (Chroma Blue - Cr - and Chrome Red - Cb). In short you now get a rendering with 16 million colors... and a better experience !

A better usability across screens

DWService has been available on various screens from the beginning. However we have optimized the code in order to improve the usability of the interface.

Should you be technician monitoring your clients' computers or simply on holidays far from home, chances are, you're not on the move with a laptop but with a tablet. So we had to improve your daily routine. And we did!

It is now easier and more intuitive to select one of your agents and use the services available for it. The responsivness makes it especially awesome to navigate between your remote files and folders.

Finally we also improved the desktop reactivity as a whole by being less aggressive on the bandwidth limitator. Any operations that you do on your remote desktops should be running smoother.

[dwservice]

Responsive Layout

We’re glad to announce the new responsive layout that automatically adapts to any screen resolution to ensure the best view. Finally you can use DWService from any device, simply by opening the device’s web browser and connecting to www.dwservice.net.

For example, you see your files this way if you are using your desktop PC.

and this way if you are using your smartphone.

[dwservice]

An easier way to manage your files

Among the applications offered by DWService, we have a remote file manager which enables you to directly access and download your documents on the go. This basically gives you unlimited secure storage from anywhere. Today we're happy to announce that we have improved this experience.

We have made easier for you to remotely manage your files with your distant machines. You can now download multiple files at once simply by drag and dropping them. Also you can upload a group of documents all at once.

This will probably be convenient for uploading quickly all your summer photos ! Try it and let us know what you think ! 

[dwservice]

We’re introducing subscriptions

We would like to extend our activities and improve the quality of DWService. For that reason we now offer subscriptions. 

Your financial contributions will support the maintenance, improvement, and promotion of DWService. Subscriptions are not a way for individuals to control the development of the project, they are not mandatory either. Instead, subscriptions are a way of ensuring the longevity and overall health of the project. In order to formalize ingoing and outgoing money transactions, we have created a new company based in EU.

You can support the DWService development with the following financial contributions:

DWService.net annual gold subscription : USD/EUR 1000 + VAT

DWService.net annual silver subscription : USD/EUR 600 + VAT

DWService.net annual bronze subscription : USD/EUR 300 + VAT

DWService.net free subscription : Pay what you want to contribute

For more information o the benefits of those subscriptions, please visit this page

[dwservice]

Привіт, we now speak Ukrainian!

The community is continuously helping translating our website so anybody can easily use DWService from wherever they are to access remote computers around the world.

Today we’re announcing the support of the Ukrainian language on DWService.net.

Do you have linguistics skills and wish to participate in an open source project ? Check out this page to see which languages still aren’t fully supported by DWService.net

[dwservice]

DWService agent now available on GitHub

The source of the DWervice agent is now available on Github. Everyone may now review the code and optimize it for Windows, macOS or Linux. If you are a developer willing to help us, please visit the project page over here.

Note that this is the code for the agent running on the remote computer not for the node and server.

In addition, you’ll find a wiki explaining how to set up the agent for development.

[dwservice]

Improving screen capture on remote desktops

As we’re closing on 2018, we continue our work on various part of DWService and we have a small piece of news to share with you. 

From now on, whenever you access one of your remote machines you now have several options offered to you whenever you want to do a screen capture. More precisely you can choose between various types of quality, that is, several levels of image compression : Minimum, Low, Medium or Maximum.

[dwservice]

Bok ! We now speak Croatian !

The community is continuously helping translating our website so anybody can easily use DWService from wherever they are to access remote computers around the world.

Today a new language is fully supported : Croatian ! So if you are lucky enough to live in this beautiful country, you should now see DWService.net in you language by default.

DWService is fully available in around 15 countries, if your language is not listed check out this page to contribute

[dwservice]

Good news! We've increased the bandwidth!

At DWService, we praise open source values and our community is growing more and more everyday. Thanks to our users, we've recently been able to open new nodes around the world with one in Norway and another one in Spain. In addition, we also have a node in France, in the United Staes and in Canada. It make the whole experience much faster for everyone

But we are not stopping there. In order to offer even better performances when remotely accessing your computers via DWService, we recently decided to increase the bandwidth.

All users now have a bandwidth of 6.2Mbps (on a best effort basis) instead of 3.2 Mbps

Gold sponsors have a maximum bandwidth of 18,8Mbps (on a best effort basis)

Silver sponsors have a maximum bandwidth of 12.5Mbps (on a best effort basis)

Bronze sponsors have a maximum bandwidth of 9.4Mbps (on a best effort basis)

​

[dwservice]

Hola ! Welcome a new node in Spain !

Just a few days after the opening of the Norway node, we are announcing another new one in southern Europe : Spain.

Europe is now covered from North to South. The current European nodes are :

North : Porsgrunn / Norway

Middle : Roubaix / France

South : Tudela / Spain

Agents allow the connection between the user and the agent, and by default, you'll connect to the closest one. So the more nodes out there, the faster is your DWService experience.

Want to contribute with your own node ? Here are the current required specs :

Server located within a Web Farm

At least 2 core of 2.3GHz

At least 6GB of RAM

At least 30GB of HD

Bandwidth of at least 256Mbps

Operating system Linux CentOS 7

To learn more, read this page

[dwservice]

We’ve got a new node in Norway!

In order to increase the performance of DWService worldwide, we're opening up new nodes one after the other thanks to the great contributions of our community.

Our new node in Porsgrunn, Norway

Nodes are a fundamental part of the experience as they allow the connection between the user and the agent. When the agent connects to the DWService infrastructure, it is redirected to the nearest node or to the less loaded one. In a similar way, when a user connects to the agent, he is redirected to the node where the agent previously connected.

In order for the user to have a fast session, agents must be connected to the nearest and most performing nodes. Thus, the more available nodes, the better. As nodes grow everywhere, many people will be able to enjoy a fast session. Also servers are less likely to be overloaded in specific regions.

This week, we're celebrating a new node in Porsgrunn, Norway. It should offer better performances to European users. For the record, here are out existing nodes

Europe

Roubaix / France

Porsgrunn / Norway

North America

Chicago / United States

Montreal / Canada

Read more about nodes and contributions

[dwservice]

DWService: let’s talk about security

DWService provides a super efficient way to connect to your remote computer(s). And it's probably the only solution to do so entirely from your browser, without installing anything on the cient side. But how secured is it?

Our infrastructure

Front-end, Back-end and Nodes are the three core components of DWService's infrastructure. More precisely:

Front-end is the component that manages the web interface of the site (www.dwservice.net), also communicates with the Back-end to redirect users and agents on the Nodes.

Back-end is the main component of the infrastructure, where data is stored, and it is responsible for managing and monitoring all the other components.

Nodes are components that manage the web interface of the sessions (nodeXXXXX.dwservice.net), also dealing with data triangulation between users and agents (managing bandwidth, checking connections, and so on). An agent is always connected to a node waiting for the user to connect.

All communication between components and between users and agents take place using TCP port 443 (https standard), communications are encrypted via SSL certificate according to the latest security standards.

What information do we stored ?

The only user's information stored on our servers are:

Authentication data: email, encrypted password and other non-mandatory personal information.

Agent data: name, description, etc.

Sharing data: name, setup, any login password.

Access data: start time, end time, IP address.

All encrypted passwords are stored using the hash technique according to the latest security standards so that they cannot be traced back to the password. Furthermore, no data that passes between users and agents is stored on our servers. The reason why we decided to store access data is to protect users in case of misuse of our service (if necessary, we are available to give this information to the competent authorities).

An open source model

Unlike other remote desktop solutions available on the market, we decided to go further by providing the source code of the agent so that anyone can check what it does in their system with the ability to modify the code for example to limit or monitor specific operations.

We are also planning to develop a simplified node version (connected to our infrastructure) so that the user can install it on his own server and on which:

Encrypted passwords will be stored.

Custom SSL certificate can be installed.

All traffic related to the agents will be redirected.

Data accesses will be stored.

DWService uses all reasonable security measures to safeguard information stored on its servers. Despite the security measures employed by DWService, users should be aware that it is impossible to guarantee absolute security with respect to electronic information.

If you have any questions you can contact us at the address [email protected].

[dwservice]

Tip: How to access an  app on a specific machine

Do you regularly need to access a certain application on DWService tight to a specific remote machine? Let’s say you have to manage several computers but among them, one is yours and you often need to download or upload some documents. Here is how to directly access the file app for that particular machine.

DWService being quite easy to set up, you might have lots of computers in your account. With time, it may get a little bit hard to distinguish your own machine that you need to access on a regular basis. Luckily, we have a great tip!

The idea is for you to bookmark a certain link tight to a specific web application on a particular machine.

Example : direct link to my files

Once logged in your dashboard, click the “+” button of the Sharing section in the computer you want to control. Give it a name, for instance “My Files”. Uncheck “Full access” and add Files and Folders in the Allowed Applications column. Then, click “Next”

If you want this link to be valid with no time limit, leave the check box Validity: Always. Click Next.

After that, you probably want to secure this connection with a password. So make sure to check the box titled “Allow login” Type in your personal password twice and choose Accept

The final screen will present a random login composed of four blocks of three digits which looks a bit like this:

Bookmark your custom direct path

Now, your access has been created. If you do not want to bother learning this new random login by heart, we have another trick! Simply bookmark this page:

https://www.dwservice.net/en/login.html?loginUser=123-456-789-101

Of course, replace the end of the URL with your own random login digits. You’ll land on a page where the login field will be prepopulated. Now you simply need to enter the password that you chose earlier on.

Note: This page will be in English, but you can modify that URL by changing

....net/en/login...

...with the letters corresponding to your language (eg.it=Italian, fr=French...)

Get DWService, it is free and open source

[dwservice]

DWService Feature Zoom : The File Explorer.

Among the features offered by DWService.net, you can very easily access files stored on remote computers. Again, all it requires it a small agent running on your home computer/server.

Once logged in DWService.net, click on the folder icon, You will be presented with a rich file explorer divided into 3 spaces.

Exploring your remote files

On the left column, you will find the main navigation area allowing you to navigate deeply among your personal files stored on the remote computer. When double-clicking on a folder, you'll be presented with files and subfolders in the second section. Note that you will even be able to access external hard drives connected on the USB ports of the remote machine. The last section will display your active transfers.

Performing actions on your remote files

Indeed, in addition to a simple file explorer you can actually perform several actions upon your documents and folders. Simply right-click to get a rich contextual menu.

Of course, you can download or rename anything. But you can also very simply upload a document to your remote computer. Another powerful feature enables you to change your file permissions; quite handy when managing a web server.

No need to trouble yourself with a FTP or webDAV client, you got it all with DWService. As a reminder, it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux but also Raspberry Pine64 and Wandboard.

Get DWService, it is free

[dwservice]

We now accept cryptocurrency!

Do you wish to contribute to the grow of DWService by making a sponsorship or a donation? We now provide new ways for you to help.

Until now, we accepted transfers via Paypal, but we understand that it may not always be the best way to transfer funds.

We now accept cryptocurrency and more specifically:

BTC: BitCoin

BCH: Bitcoin Cash

ETH: Ethereum

ETC: Ethereum Classic

LTC: Litecoin

If you want to donate in a currency that is not listed, please contact us at [email protected] to request it and we will send you the address for the appropriate currency.

For the reminder:

Sponsorships: a sponsorship is an annual commitment of funds to the project. Donations: a donation is a once off financial contribution to the project.

Interested? Visit this page to learn more

[dwservice]

Goodbye Back to my Mac, Hello DWService!

Apple just announced that the release of macOS Mojave, currently in beta, will mark the end of Back to my Mac. Currently part of iCloud, Back to my Mac was initially developed to enable users to remotely access the fils and the screen of their remote Mac computer. Good thing we’re here!

If you are a Mac customer and are used to remotely access one of your Mac, this piece of news might impact your daily routine when Mojave comes out of beta at the end of September. Sure, you can always choose to go with a paid alternative software. Or you can jump on DWService.

Free and open source, DWService is accessible from any modern browser, without any need to install a software or an extension on the computer in front of you. All you need is to install a small agent on your remote computer. Et voilà!

In practice, this means that you’ll be able to access your files and your remote screen even from a restricted computer, like the one in a cyber café or in a library. It also means that you will not have to trouble your friends or family by temporary installing anything on their machine. And because all is happening within a web browser, it does not matter what operating system they are using.

Of course, DWService is not limited to one remote machine. It is also not limited to macOS but also allows you to remotely access a Windows or a Linux machine.

Get prepared, check it out

[dwservice]

DWService Tip: Direct access to a specific remote machine

Do you manage several remote machines from DWService.net? Tired of having to log in your dashboard to select the computer that you want to access? Well, we’ve got a small tip for you!

Say, for instance, that you have set up your home computer and your work computer in DWService.net. Let’s say you called the first one “Home” and the second one “Work”.

When logging in your dashboard, after your email address,  simply append the “#” sign, followed by the computer name of your choice. 

If you usually log in with [email protected], then you would access your work computer by using: [email protected]#Work. Your password, of course, remains unchanged.

This will lead you straight to your work computer dashboard!

Get DWService, it is open source and free