All of the client-side software (e.g., the remote-control server and viewers that get installed on the "target PC's" and the "viewer PC's") is free and open-source. The echoServer software (used to interconnect "viewers" to "targets") is a try-before-buy piece of shareware. For IT Service Providers, the registration cost is USD$350 for a 3-year license; for personal or non-profit use, the cost is USD$50 for a perpetual license.

Once registered, the software is fully-enabled with no montly subscription requiresments. It is also fully-enabled for all echoWare^® applications, not just our Remote Support System.

In its unregistered, try-before-buy state, the number of simultaneous client connections to an echoServer is capped at four, and any data connections between those clients gets torn down after about 10 minutes. To lift these restrictions, registration codes may be purchased here at our Kagi store.

If you're not up for running your own echoServer for your community of users, or if you have no static IP addresses to run one on, please feel free to email us about our hosting a dedicated echoServer for you (e.g., "yourName.echo-service.com").

Most of the online documentation for our products can be found at the EchoVNC Support Pages. If you can't find what you need there, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Simply put, echoWare^® enables any peer-to-peer or client-server application to utilize a "packet relay server" approach in order to achieve end-to-end connectivity without adjusting any intervening firewalls or NAT'ing routers. Many remote access applications have a "packet relay server" capability to them (e.g, GoToMyPC, GoToAssist, and others), but echoWare is the first software toolkit we know of that allows any Internet application to quickly and easily incorporate this capability.

You can download the echoWare SDK for Windows here: ftp://ftp.echogent.com/EchoWare

The echoWare DLL is open-source, and is available under the "Sleepycat license". This license permits you to use echoWare at no charge under the condition that if you use the software in an application you redistribute, the complete source code for your application must be available and freely redistributable under reasonable conditions. If you do not want to release the source code for your application, you may purchase a license from Echogent Systems.

For pricing information, or if you have further questions on licensing, please contact us.

Sounds technical, doesn't it?

A "packet relay server" is nothing more than a way of "bouncing" an Internet connection from one endpoint to another. Think of it as the telephone operator in those old-fashioned switchboard-style telephone companies: a telephone user would call the operator, ask for a connection to another telephone user, and the operator would plug in some wires to make the connection. In this model, the operator is acting as a "packet-relay server".

We call our packet relay server an echoServer, as the connection effect (ie, bouncing one connection to another) can also be thought of like an "echo". Well, we thought so.

When two EchoVNC users connect to each other via a packet relay server, any firewalls or routers on the user-side of the connection see all of the Internet traffic as "outgoing".
None of the new connections appear to be "incoming", which any firewalls or NAT'ing routers are there specifically to prevent.

Which is all to say, if you use EchoVNC to make your VNC connections, you won't have to worry about making any "port forwarding" adjustments anymore.

You also won't need to worry about your partner's IP address anymore. An EchoVNC connection uses whatever "nicknames" or aliases the users choose. So you can make an EchoVNC
connection to "Bob'sOfficePC" rather than "66.123.20.58". That's progress.

Please see our download page. The echoServers for Windows or Linux can be downloaded individually, or as part of the EchoWare^® Remote Support System.

Trust is the most important variable here. Do you trust the person who runs the echoServer that you're using? If you do, then your connection is secure.

For added security, echoWare^® utilizes OpenSSL's 128-bit AES encryption for the end-to-end data connections. There's a small tradeoff between "data security" and "performance", but we've worked to optimize that.

Still, all the encryption in the world won't help if you just don't trust the person who runs the echoServer. If this is an issue for you, solve that part first.