NAT and Firewall Configuration

In most cases, the NSPC - LiveTech agent will work with your existing NAT or Firewall setup. If computers on which you have installed the agent are not appearing on our network, you may need to configure your firewall to allow traffic from the NSPC - LiveTech agent to our server. Each agent makes an outbound TCP connection to the our server. In the even that your hardware needs to be configured, we will work with you to do so properly.

Managing Desktops

Your NSPC - LiveTech account can be created online at www.northshorepc.net by clicking on Create New Account under NSPC – LiveTech Account Login and entering your email address and a secure password, that you should change the from time to time, to use when you log into www.northshorepc.net.  Once you activate your account you can then place an order by clicking the Order NSPC - LiveTech link within the User Menu.  Note, you must be logged in.  Once your order is complete you can install the agent.Once you have successfully created your order, simply allow your order to be processed and a technician will contact you to identify your machine on our network, or walk you through the installation.  During your wait please feel free to fill out a Request for Service form by going to www.northshorepc.net and in the Top Bar click the LiveTicket link.NSPC - LiveTech uses tags to help you organize your computers.  Please use your contract number when requesting service if you have one. There are many places in NSPC - LiveTech where we can filter your selection based on tags we have assigned to your computers. Initially, there will only be your contract number set as a tag assigned to any computers in your organization allowing full customization of these tags to simplify identifying the correct system(s).

FAQ

How does NSPC - LiveTech work?

NSPC - LiveTech uses a small agent running on each monitored computer to collect inventory data and process management commands and communicate with the NSPC - LiveTech server. When each NSPC - LiveTech account is created a pre-configured installation file is generated. This installation file includes all the information needed by the agent to securely connect to the NSPC - LiveTech server under the new account. The NSPC - LiveTech agent makes an encrypted outbound connection to the NSPC - LiveTech server, verifies that the server has the right credentials, and begins monitoring the local host. Because the NSPC - LiveTech agent only makes outbound connections, in most cases it will work with existing NAT or Firewall setups. In some cases, you may need to configure your firewall to allow traffic from the NSPC - LiveTech agent to our server. Each agent makes an outbound TCP connection to the server. If configuration changes need to be made we will work with you to make those changes.

Why an agent?

One of the first questions we are often asked is why NSPC - LiveTech uses an agent. Many services tout themselves as being "Agent-less." While we considered this approach, we believe that an agent-based solution provides our customers a much more scalable, consistent, flexible and secure experience. Agent-less solutions require some centralized server to poll each computer you want to monitor. As the number of computers and alerts you want to monitor increases, the amount of network traffic increases as well. Because each agent monitors its computer locally, there is no need for a server to constantly poll each machine. This means less network traffic, with much more responsive alerts. Using an agent provides much better scalability. Agent-less solutions are also dependent on services already available on a computer. For Microsoft's Windows operating system, this means Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)--a management API that is inconsistent and sometimes broken across the various version of Windows in operation (2000, XP, Vista, etc.). The options become even more complex when additional operating systems are thrown into the mix where WMI is not even an option. Using an agent allows NSPC - LiveTech to provide consistent results for a variety of platforms. In addition to being limited to management interfaces available on a computer, agent-less solutions are also dependent on the features available through those interfaces. NSPC - LiveTech's agent allows us to provide a much more robust and flexible suite of remote management tools, including shutdown and restart, license key extraction and remote desktop support. Finally, agent-less solutions require any management server to send requests to your computers. For a hosted service like NSPC - LiveTech, this would require anyone wanting to use our service to open their networks to incoming network requests, creating a potential security hole. NSPC - LiveTech is designed to require no such exposure by limiting all network connections outbound to our servers. Using an agent is more secure. The main downside to an agent-based solution is the fact that each computer you want to monitor requires an agent to be installed. We have worked hard to make this as easy as possible by limiting the amount of configuration information kept by each agent, and integrating automatic background updates. This means you can push a single installer using login scripts, or Group Policy Objects (GPO), and once an agent is installed, you don't have to worry about it again.

How big is the agent?

With an agent running on each computer a valid question is how much impact will the additional program have on system performance. The NSPC - LiveTech agent is written in C++ to be as lean as possible, our smaller NSPC - LiveTicket that is pre-bundled was written in VS.net and together have minimum impact on memory, processor and networking resources.

Memory footprint

The agent's in-memory footprint is less than 16MB, including all support libraries such as compression and encryption. The NSPC - LiveTech agent comes in an installation file with LiveTicket.  NSPC - LiveTicket will house a small icon in the system tray, otherwise it will not be noticed by performance monitoring unless we are remotely supporting your device or our performing maintenance.

Processor usage

The NSPC - LiveTech agent requires minimal processor resources when running. In most cases, there is no measurable processor usage by the agent. There are certain times when the agent will use some processor resources. This is primarily during startup, when the agent is connecting to the server, as well as periodic checks for alert triggers through operating system interfaces such as WMI and maintenance. The agent shows a temporary 2-3% CPU usage when these activities are taking place.

Network traffic

The NSPC - LiveTech agent is designed to minimize network traffic. The primary network traffic impact occurs when the agent first connects, and reports the system's current status to the server. This is typically a few kilobytes of traffic. Because the agent runs locally on the machine, there is no polling necessary for alerts, and therefore no network activity. The agent does send back a periodic heartbeat a few bytes in size every five minutes to let the server know there are no network problems.

How secure is NSPC - LiveTech?

NSPC - LiveTech's agent is designed to operate safely and securely across the Internet. First, all connections are made from the agent (your device) to the server. The agent is not capable of accepting any inbound connections. This eliminates the possibility that an attacker can send rogue commands to the agent, or take advantage of security weaknesses at the application or operating system levels. Second, the agent verifies it is talking to the right servers using well established public key cryptography techniques--the same techniques that secure all credit card transactions over the Internet. This ensures that the agent is not susceptible to a "man-in-the-middle" attack, where an attacker attempts to impersonate the NSPC - LiveTech servers. Once the connection is established, all communication is encrypted using 2,048 bit keys and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm. Additional security precautions include the fact that NSPC - LiveTech does not store any plain-text passwords on its systems, and our team does not know, and is unable to obtain, users' passwords. For this reason, we are unable to recover forgotten passwords.  However, if you opt for us to keep your system’s maintained in a specific way which requires us to possess those passwords in a database, they will be reserved for NSPC - LiveTech Account Executives, Technical Directors and Technicians.  NSPC - LiveTech is committed to providing a safe and secure environment.

What are tags?

Tags enable us to quickly and easily group computers together. For example, we could tag all of the laptops in your company with a laptop tag, and all of the computers belonging to your sales department with a sales tag. Later, we can filter the list of computers to only show the laptops belonging to your sales team.

Tags are used throughout the application to make it easy to select groups of computers to work with. A computer can have an unlimited number of tags associated with it making it easier to setup different solutions.