Port Forwarding

Port forwarding lets you expose one or more ports of a cloud desktop to your local network or the internet. It's most often used with Remote Desktop Protocol.

This feature works for DaDesktop Course machines (which require a private server), DaDesktop For Work, and Standalone machines. Keep in mind that the interface may look slightly different depending on the type of machine.

Select Port Forwarding

Choose 'Advanced' followed by 'Port Forwarding'.

You can set up port forwarding using either automatic or manual allocation. Automatic allocation grabs the next available port on the server, which is usually the simplest approach. Manual allocation, on the other hand, lets you pick each external port within the 10000–65500 range if needed. Any previously configured manual port forwards remain in place and can be edited as you like.

Auto Allocation

This screenshot shows auto allocation, along with a manual port forward that had been added earlier using port 11122 on the host and port 22 on the VM.

Port Forwarding Auto-Allocation

Manual Allocation

Here, port 11122 is being used for both TCP and UDP forwarding to port 22 on the cloud desktop VM for SSH. You can choose different UDP and TCP ports if required.

Manual Port forwarding

Example for Windows RDP

This example uses the older manual allocation method, but of course auto allocation works just as well.

1. Find your DaDesktop desktop, click "Port forwarding", then enter your TCP ports for the remote connection. This will be your external port number followed by 3389 (for example, 66666:3389). Make a note of your port number—if you forget it, you can click Port forwarding again to see it.

RDP Port Forward Windows Example

2. Submit the changes, then set up a password inside your Windows DD machine and click "Enable Remote Desktop".

Submit and set up a password inside your Windows DD machine

3. On your Windows devices, open Remote Desktop and enter the server name plus your TCP port. In this case I'm using zh4cn, so it becomes zh4cn.npg.io:xxxxx. Under 'Show options' you can also choose the screen resolution for your remote desktop window.

remote desktop window

3.1 To log in to your DaDesktop remote desktop, by default

"You should reset your username and password in the machine first."

Then connect to the remote desktop.

4. You'll now have a remote desktop that uses the DD template and your own device's sound card. This also makes it simple to copy, paste, or export documents. (The small window on the left shows a DD remote desktop with audio.)

window DD remote desktop with audio