LabVIEW Idea Exchange
Connecting to remote panels using LabVIEW is difficult if private networks, local private and external public IPs (under NAT), and firewalls, etc. are involved. It requires significant knowledge as well as external networking configurations (port forwarding, etc.), and possibly admin privileges to modify those.
There are plenty of companies that have found a way around all this. The prime example is chrome remote desktop, which seamlessly works even if target computers are in hidden locations on private networks, as long as each machine can access the internet with an outgoing UDP connection. The way I understand it, each computer registers with the Google server, which in turn patches the two outgoing connections together in a way that both will communicate directly afterwards. All traffic tunnels inside the plain Google chat protocol (udp based). Similar mechanisms have been developed for security systems (example) and many more.
Since the bulk of the traffic is directly between the endpoints, the traffic load on the external connection management server is very minimal. It simply keeps an updated list of active nodes and handles the patching if requested.
I envision a very similar mechanism where LabVIEW users can associate all their applications and distributed computers with a given user ID (e.g. ni profile), and, at all times be able to get a list of all currently running remote systems published under that user ID. If we want to connect to one of them, the connection server would patch things together without the need of any networking configuration. Optionally, users could publish any given panel under a public key, that can be distributed to allow public connections by any other LabVIEW user.
This is a very general idea. Details of the best implementation would need to be worked out. Thanks for voting!
