I am glad to annonce a new Mesh graph feature into Meshcentral.com. When you install mesh agents in computers, the agents form a mesh, discovering and monitoring each other. Well, it's not important to know the details of how the mesh is formed, but just for fun, I added a way to visualize the mesh nodes and links between nodes.

To see it, go into the "Account" tab, click on a mesh and select "Graph". I used the D3js library to render the data into something quite fun. The data is sent once to the web page and Javascript takes care of rendering it. You can also use the mouse to move nodes around and there are configuration boxes at the top to change the graph around. In general, you see all the computers in the mesh you selected, but if computers that are part of a mesh see other computers that are not part of your mesh, they will be drawn in a different color.

Below is a picture of my own mesh on my development machine.

Enjoy!
Ylian
meshcentral.com

Every few weeks, I try to add more Intel AMT support in Meshcentral.com. This time around, I added multi-display support for Intel AMT on the hardware KVM viewer. So, when you connect to Intel AMT KVM from meshcentral.com, you not only get the new power control icon that allows you to reboot, power on, power off the computer. If the remote computer has two or three displays hooked up to the built-in graphics adapter, you see a new icon that allows you to toggle between displays. I recorded a video demonstration of the entire process.

I don't have multi-display support for the software KVM yet, but that has been a often requested feature. So, as soon as I can, I will be working on that.

Enjoy!
Ylian
Meshcentral.com

Meshcentral.com is of course a cloud service, but it can also be run as an Intranet service. I do exactly that within Intel and so, I get a bunch of users that give me feedback about the Intranet version of Meshcentral.com from time-to-time. Well, I supported two ways of routing traffic to Intel AMT... using a another node as traffic relay or use Intel AMT Client Initiated Remote Access (CIRA). Someone gave me feedback last week that within the Intranet he could not access his lone machine, this was surprising since the Intranet version of Meshcentral has direct connectivity and would not have to do any complicated routing to perform management operations. With all the cloud techniques I use, I never bothered to support the simplest routing of them all. So this week, I added "direct routing" from the server to the nodes.

I still have a flaw with my implementation... I realized it last night. This new direct routing to Intel AMT only works if the Mesh Agent is alive and running to report it's presense to the server. So, there is a blog about a new feature... but I still have work to do to make it fully work.

In the picture below, we see all 3 ways Meshcentral can route traffic to Intel AMT. CIRA only works passed NAT routers, traffic relay works passed NAT's and HTTPS proxies. The direct routing could be useful if computers are exposed with a public IP address, or at least the Intel AMT ports.

Ylian
Meshcentral.com

Just a quick note to say that there will be server maintenance tomorrow June 14th for a while. The server room that hosts Meshcentral.com is upgrading their UPS. So, no panic you there is no server, it's all under control.

Ylian
meshcentral.com

Two days ago I started updating the Windows x86 Mesh Agent with the latest v1.67 version. In this latest agent, the major change is the new use of the Windows Crypto API. In the past, I would use OpenSSL for everything across platforms. This new version stull uses OpenSSL, but on Windows I now make more use of Windows Crypto API to generate and store cryptographic keys. Should make machines that use the new agent more officult to spoof. In addition, added improved support for Intel Remote Wake, the mesh agent will make use of this technology when available to make the computer wakable over the Internet.

Many computers have a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and in the 64bit version of the Windows Mesh Agent, I added support for TPM. Sadly, I don't release the 64bit version of the Mesh Agent right now, but that may come later once I get everything validated. There is not much benefits to the 64bit version, except that I allow use of newer Windows API's that would break the Mesh Agent running on Windows XP and Vista.

So, in total the new mesh agent has a lot more support for Intel Platform Technologies. Below I have a picture of what the Mesh Agent looks like. Not bad for a single self-updating executable. All of the code is tightly integrated so there is very little wasted size. It's almost as tight as it can be. Click on the picture for a larger view.

Ylian
meshcentral.com

Hi everyone. First, for people in the US, happy long weekend! I just wanted to give an update on what is going on with Meshcentral.com. Here is a lot of interest in the technology and so, I have been busy fixing and improving all sorts of things, most of the focus is on the server side and underlying peer-to-peer routing. But I got two fun things to report:

Intel Remote Wake.As annonced previously, Meshcentral supports Intel Remote Wake, this is a technology that allows users to wake up sleeping computers on the Internet. It's like an internet version of wake-on-lan. I have been improving the was I handle this feature on Intel based platforms in the last two weeks, with some more fixes coming soon. Motherboards with Intel Remote Wake are starting to be avaialble, one user pointed me to the ASRock web site where they show their users how to use Meshcentral.com to wakeup their PC remotely including from a cellphone.

Intel Developer Forum. This year Intel IDF is in San Francisco September 10 to 12th and I will be a speaker at a lab. I am just about to start working on the content that will focus on how to connect Intel Platforms to the cloud. What makes me excited about this presentation is the there are plenty of platform and processor features (Intel AMT, Intel Remote Wake, AES-NI, RANDRD, Wake-on-LAN, TPM) that can be used to connect platforms to the cloud. Since Meshcentral uses all of these, I will be able to help understand what all of these can do and how build them into your product.

Ok, that is it for now. Hope to see many of you at IDF!
Ylian
meshcentral.com

Yesterday I updated Meshcentral.com along with the release of the Microsoft Windows Mesh Agent v1.70 to add a new location feature. First, this is a optional feature, you need to have it enabled in the mesh access policy for this to work, and existing meshes have this feature off by default. If you create a new mesh, just select it during mesh creation. For existing meshes, you need to use Mesh Connector to edit the policy and add the new feature.

Once location access is enabled, the Windows v1.70 Mesh agent will periodically send nearby WIFI access points and signal strength to the Mesh Server. This is similar with that other services do on mobile phones. Meshcentral.com will compile a list of know access points and keep only the last seen access points for each node.

I have not yet put any web site features using this data, but I do have a C# API that can connect to Meshcentral.com and ask the following questions:

• What WIFI location enabled nodes are present in my account?
• What access points does a given node see?
• What nodes are visible from a given access point?
• What nodes are near a given node?

All queries only return nodes that are present in your Meshcentral.com account. So even if another node belonging to someone else is in the area, it will no show up in these queries. Initialy the idea is to use this information to know what nodes are located physically near each other. This can be used for ad-hoc collaboration, or other uses. In the future, I will be looking at converting this data into real coordinates using some type of 3rd party service so that users can see a map of the location of all nodes on their account. Could be useful for asset tracking and as an anti-theft feature.

If someone want to try to mesh location API right away, let me know. Otherwise, I will be making it available generally when I get time. I also want to add some use of this data on the web site itself.

Ylian
meshcentral.com

Just a quick follow up on the new Meshcentral.com location feature from my previous post. I just added in the web UI a new entry in the device page that shows which other devices are physically nearby. The new entry is just below the Intel AMT line, and is ranked starting with the nearest node. The distance is determined by how many WIFI access points both devices can see in common. If you hover the mouse over the links, a little box will show the number of AP's in common.

Ok, that is it. Again, this wifi feature is opt-in only and you need to set the mesh policy to enable it. Also, nodes need to have Wifi to have this work and it will show only other nearby devices that are also in your account.

Ylian
meshcentral.com

Quick post to update everyone on a few things:

• Meshcentral.com has been having outages. A few hours 2 days ago and a few hours yesterday both times during the night. The server is actualy fine but administrators of my server room are doing some work on the network. I did get a few mails about this and forwarded the concerns to the server room administrators. Hopefully it will not happen again.
• Mesh agent v1.71. I just release a new version of the agent to fix a problems with the agent running on some machines. Version 1.70 had a new wireless scanning feature and made use of "wlanapi.dll" which I assumed all versions of Windows had, even back to Windows XP. Well, the was not correct, some version of Windows Server don't come with wireless services installed and the new agent failed to run. Agent v1.71 has dynamic bindings to this DLL, so if the DLL is not present, it's ok, it will still run but with WiFi scanning disabled.
• Intel Developer Forum. It's this time of year again, IDF 2013 will be in San Francisco September 10 to 12th. I will be a speaker this time around with one session and two labs. My topic is connecting Intel Platforms to the cloud, I will have a great time using a much hardware features as I can possibly use to make Intel computers work with the cloud. More blogs on this to come.

That is it for now,
Ylian
meshcentral.com

For people following work on Meshcentral, this day has been a long time coming. Today we are announcing that we started making Meshcentral available for hosting on Amazon EC2. Computer administrators anywhere now have a choice of using Meshcentral.com or launch their very own instance of Meshcentral on Amazon. They get control over the management data, user accounts and more. With many other online service, you have to use servers you don’t control and give up your data to someone else. Now, with this new option, you’re launching your own Meshcentral instance and take all of the control back, enabling a truly personal and secure cloud of devices.

Right now, we are making a free instance of Meshcentral available publically on Amazon with a 10 device management limit. This instance can run on the smallest Amazon instance, the “t1.micro”. Users new to Amazon AWS can run a t1.micro instance for 1 year for free, and so, many can try their own Meshcentral instance completely free of change. We have made amazing efforts to make Meshcentral fit on such a small virtual machine.

Even in such a tight virtual machine, Meshcentral instances packs loads of features: in-band web based remote desktop, terminal, file access, remote power control, audit logs, web page relay, TCP relay, mesh messaging, remote WMI, WiFi location, Intel AMT cloud provisioning, Intel AMT control, wide OS/CPU support and much more. When you launch a Meshcentral instance, fresh updated software is downloaded from Meshcentral.com and installed. Instances are always kept updated as new mesh features are added thanks to our unique Platform Manager software, that keeps track of signed software packages and deploys updates to all Amazon instances.

To get startedwe have documentation that includes a quick start guide, along with a YouTube tutorial video. Takes about 5 minutes to launch the instance and 15 to 20 minutes for the instance to set itself up. Instances create new certificates and cryptographic keys upon first launch so each Meshcentral instance is unique and secure. Give it a try, and give us feedback.

Ylian
meshcentral.com

Use a Meshcentral Amazon instance to create a truly personal cloud.
Run your own small business online management console.

Mesh Amazon Instances are setup and kept up to date from Meshcentral.com.

The all new online Mesh Settings Editor allows administrators to configure the Mesh Server online.
(You can even change IIS security and certificates, we restart and reconfigure IIS automatically)

Today I am announcing Meshcentral’s support for in-band Windows multi-display. This is by far the most requested feature to date. In Meshcentral, administrators can select a device and click on the desktop tab, this bring them to a fully web-based Javascript remote display viewer what can connect to remote computes and get full remote desktop. The protocols is fully web-optimized offering high speed remote desktop over the internet and inside a browser. No need to download a special application, all you need is an HTML5 web browser. Today, we added multi-display capability to this viewer. Users can see all the displays at once, or select to view only one. They can also switch in real time between the different viewers.

In addition to in-band remote display, Meshcentral already supports Intel AMT out-of-band remote multi-display. So, on select Intel platforms, administrators can perform web-based remote desktop in both in-band mode (then the OS is up) or out-of-band mode (when the OS is down). Allowing for complete control over a computer under any circumstances. Administrators will favor in-band remote desktop when possible because it can see all the multi-displays at once and has much greater speed over the Internet.

The new multi-display feature is part of Mesh Agent v1.72. The new mesh agent solves a problem where the agent would not switch correctly on some computers when pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL, so all around improvements.

Enjoy!
Ylian
https://meshcentral.com

Meshcentral now supports multi-monitor devices in our remote desktop web viewer.
(Unlimited monitor count)

Meshcentral also supports Windows 8 and Intel AMT out-of-band multi-monitor (up to 3 monitors*).
*Depending on Intel AMT version

I just added certificate based Intel AMT cloud activation support (TLS-PKI) in Meshcentral.com that works behind NAT’s and HTTP proxies, uses a reusable USB key and makes use of Intel AMT one-time-password (OTP) for improved security.

Ok, let’s back up a little. Computers with Intel AMT need the feature activated before it can be used. Historically it’s been difficult to setup the software, network, certificates and settings to start activating Intel AMT, especially for smaller businesses in a way that allows administrators to use all of its features. It’s even more difficult if all the computers are mobile. With Mesh, we want to put all of the Intel AMT activation in the cloud, so administrators don’t need to worry about the how it all works. Administrators can launch their own instance of Mesh on Amazon AWS, install the mesh agent on each their machines and, when time permits create and use a single USB key to touch each machine for Intel AMT activation.

Meshcentral.com will automatically detect when a computer can be activated and do all of the appropriate work in the background, and this, even behind a HTTP proxy or NAT/double-NAT routers. Mesh fully supports Intel AMT Client Initiated Remote Access (CIRA) so once activated, Intel AMT can call back to the Mesh server independent of OS state. Administrators can then use the web site or tools like Manageability Commander Mesh Edition to use Intel AMT features across network obstacles. Mesh will automatically route traffic using direct, relay or CIRA, so administrators don’t never need to worry about how to connect to a machine over the Internet. As an aside, Mesh fully supports Host Based Provisioning, so that is still an available option if you don’t want to touch using a USB key and are ok with the client mode limitations.

A full video demonstration is available here.

Enjoy!
Ylian
https://meshcentral.com

Hi everyone! This year I have been asked to make a comeback at IDF, the Intel Developer Forum! As my blog readers know, I work on many interesting projects as a one man development team: Meshcentral.com, Manageability Developer Tool Kit (DTK), Intel System Defense Utility (ISDU) and the Intel Developer Tools for UPnP Technologies. Many of these projects make direct use of unique Intel platform technologies like: Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT), Intel Remote Wake, Intel Identity Protection Technology (Intel IPT), Digital Random Generator, AES-IN, Wake-on-LAN, etc. So, I am in a pretty good position to share with developers my experiences and help more people use these great platform features.

This year, I am giving one session (1 hour) and one lab (2 hour). The lab is given twice, so the program will show two, two-hour blocks. Here is my schedule as currently planned:

BCSS003:Meshcentral.com – Using Intel® AMT and Intel® Smart Connect Features From the Cloud.
Day 1, Tuesday September 10th, 3:45 to 4:45pm, Room 2007

SFTL003: Using Intel® AMT and Intel® Smart Connect Features From the Cloud
Day 2, Wednesday September 11th, 1:00 to 3:15pm, Room 2000
Day 2, Wednesday September 11th, 3:45 to 6:00pm, Room 2000

In both classes the goal is the same: show that Intel platforms are great at connecting to the cloud. Lets say you want to connect a device to a server in the cloud. We are going to look at how it's usualy done with a regular client-to-server connection. Then we are going to leverage all the Intel platform technologies at our disposal to add many more capabilities to our cloud service. The session will be a quick overview, I will demonstrate the benefits of using platform features and show you how to get started quickly and what code we have already available. The labs are typically smaller, more indepth and much more interactive, I get to answer questions that can help developers in their day-to-day work, show where to get source code, how to get started and much more. The entire lab will be demos, code & fun!

I look forward to seeing you there. To register or for more information, links below:

IDF Main Page: http://www.intel.com/IDF
IDF Registration: https://secure.idfregistration.com/IDF2013/

Ylian
Meshcentral.com

I just added certificate based Intel AMT cloud activation support (TLS-PKI) in Meshcentral.com that works behind NAT’s and HTTP proxies, uses a reusable USB key and makes use of Intel AMT one-time-password (OTP) for improved security.

Ok, let’s back up a little. Computers with Intel AMT need the feature activated before it can be used. Historically it’s been difficult to setup the software, network, certificates and settings to start activating Intel AMT, especially for smaller businesses in a way that allows administrators to use all of its features. It’s even more difficult if all the computers are mobile. With Mesh, we want to put all of the Intel AMT activation in the cloud, so administrators don’t need to worry about the how it all works. Administrators can launch their own instance of Mesh on Amazon AWS, install the mesh agent on each their machines and, when time permits create and use a single USB key to touch each machine for Intel AMT activation.

Meshcentral.com will automatically detect when a computer can be activated and do all of the appropriate work in the background, and this, even behind a HTTP proxy or NAT/double-NAT routers. Mesh fully supports Intel AMT Client Initiated Remote Access (CIRA) so once activated, Intel AMT can call back to the Mesh server independent of OS state. Administrators can then use the web site or tools like Manageability Commander Mesh Edition to use Intel AMT features across network obstacles. Mesh will automatically route traffic using direct, relay or CIRA, so administrators don’t never need to worry about how to connect to a machine over the Internet. As an aside, Mesh fully supports Host Based Provisioning, so that is still an available option if you don’t want to touch using a USB key and are ok with the client mode limitations.

A full video demonstration is available here.

Enjoy!
Ylian
https://meshcentral.com

I am back in my hotel after the first day at IDF2013. I did not do any of the fun stuff today, but I did work... practiced my session content and in mid-afternoon delivered a session on Meshcentral.com and Intel platform features, it was a lot of fun! Thank you to everyone that attended. Tomorrow I am doing it again, this time two 2 hour labs back-to-back.

SFTL003: Using Intel® AMT and Intel® Smart Connect Features From the Cloud
Day 2, Wednesday September 11th, 1:00 to 3:15pm, Room 2000
Day 2, Wednesday September 11th, 3:45 to 6:00pm, Room 2000

For people that want more technical details, I will be diving into code and showing off even more features of Meshcentral.com. Hope to see many of you there.

Ylian
meshcentral.com

I am constantly on a quest to add support for more devices and this week I got one more... ChromeOS! Now, it's not official support really, what I did was put my x86 based Google Chromebook in developer mode and then fixed up the Linux/x86 mesh agent so it could run on it. So, this is only for people that are developers of know what they are doing. It took me a while to figure out how to get it going, but here are the basic steps:

• Remove the battery under the Chromebook and toggle the switch to the other position to enable developer mode.
• Turn the computer on, press CTRL-D at the error mesage, follow instructions it will take a few minute.
• Once booted again, hit CTRL-D again and you will be at the desktop... the device is basicaly "rooted".
• Press CTRL-ALT-T to enter the console.
• Type "shell" and "sudo sh" to login as root.
• Type a few commands to re-mount the file system in read/write mode. (You can Google this part).
• In Meshcentral.com, "My Account" and "Install". Select the Mesh and Linux/x86 agent and cut & paste the script into the terminal.

That is it. I have not looked at adding the Mesh Agent so it can auto-start yet. I need to work on that. I did a video showing that Meshcentral with ChromeOS looks like.

Enjoy!
Ylian
meshcentral.com

Well, this is exciting! A week back we released and started testing a new Mesh Agent for Android published on the Google Play store. You can now manage your Android devices from Meshcentral.com! Since the new agent is just a normal Android application, you only need to install and activate it and you are ready to go. So, if you already have a Meshcentral.com account, just go to "My Account" / "Install" and select "Android/All" as the type of agent you want to install. Follow instructions from there.

If you are just getting started with Meshcentral.com, we published a Powerpoint presentation that shows how to install the new Mesh Agent step-by-step. Create a meshcentral account and get started, it's free. Actualy, it's not completely free, we need your feedback on any problems you encounter. If you have feedback, go to the Meshcentral information page and mail us.

Now, once you get the Mesh agent installed, what can you do? For now you can remotely access your files on the Android device from Meshcentral.com. You can rename, move, upload, download, etc. You can also make the device vibrate, flash the light and send little remote messages. We have a Youtube video demonstrating the installation and the features of this agent.

Now for the technical part: Rick, my cubemate at Intel is the brains behind this new mesh agent port. The agent on Android is compiled using the Android NDK, so it's mostly native code which makes it very fast and efficient. We compiled the agent in what is called a "fat" binary, with x86, ARMv5, ARMv7 and MIPS architectures all rolled into one. The agent package is larger as a result of the support for all 4 architectures, but I hear Google optimizes this so you only keep in your phone the binary that is compatible with your phone.

Enjoy!
Ylian
Meshcentral.com

Instructions on how to install the Mesh agent on Android.

Overview of the network routing used with Meshcentral.com and the Mesh Agent

I am very happy to announce that Meshcentral.com now supports remote management of the Intel® Galileo boards! We now have a new port of the Mesh Agent that targets this board and released it on Meshcentral.com along with the installation script a few hours ago. Meshcentral makes it easy to install the mesh agent, the web site gives you an Anduino Sketch that you simply cut & paste into the Arduino development environment. That is it! A few minutes later the device will show up on Meshcentral.com and you can start managing it. We have a Youtube installation and demonstration video here.

For people that have this board already, please test it and give us feedback. I have not used the board with the MicroSD card yet and so, I have not looked into getting the Mesh agent to stay on the device across reboots. So far, the agent has been tested to works on the stock OS and development environment and suggestions as to how to improve the user experience are very welcome.

By the way, I left the Intel AMT / Intel vPro monitoring and relay code active in this port of the agent. So, if you have an Intel AMT machine nearby the is sleeping / soft-off, your Galileo board will now start monitoring it and relay traffic back to Meshcentral.com.

Enjoy!
Ylian
https://meshcentral.com

A quick note to say that I will be in Las Vegas next week for Amazon Re:Invent, a conference on everything Amazon and cloud. As many may already know, Meshcentral is available on Amazon EC2 for people who are interested on starting their own instance of the Mesh server. This is a great way to get all the features of Meshcentral.com but doing it running your own instance of the server.

I will be giving two quick 15 minute ChalkTalk on Meshcentral, my current schedule is:

• Wednesday 11/13, 4pm
• Thursday 11/14, 4pm

Not sure the exact location, but it seems like it's somewhere on the show floor. Look for the Chalk Talk event. It's very informal, there is a few seats and a big screen. Looks like it's going to be lots of fun. If you read this and see me, please come say hi!

Ylian
meshcentral.com

Just a quick note to say thank you to people who showed up at my presentation last week at Amazon Re:Invent in Las Vegas, I had a great time. I attended a bunch of sessions on Amazon AWS and will see in the coming year how I can use my new knowledge to help make Meshcentral on Amazon AWS even better. Also, thank you to the organizers of the Chalk talks! They where giving away 600 hours of Amazon AWS compute time which a bunch of people took advantage of.

Below, some of the pictures of my presentation and the event. Looking forward to next year!

Ylian
https://meshcentral.com