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Way back in November 2016 I reviewed Devolutions' Wayk Now. Its ease of use (and free price point) impressed me back then, but I am much more impressed now. Devolutions has greatly expanded this product, and I'm happy to tell you all about it.
Wayk Now in a nutshell
Wayk Now has a straightforward mission: to make it as simple as possible for customers to request and complete remote support requests regardless of the underlying application platform.
"But what about network address translation (NAT) and port forwarding?" you rightly ask. Devolutions worked around this problem in a brilliant way. Wayk Den is a Devolutions web service that runs in Microsoft Azure and abstracts away all the protocol and port plumbing from your remote support connection.
What's cool about Wayk Den is that there is absolutely no user interaction required; as long as you have the "Ready" light showing in the application, you're connected to Wayk Den. You should be able to request and accept support requests on any LAN, WAN, or over the internet.
Wayk Den is enabled and ready for action
Devolutions is hard at work creating a version of Wayk Den that businesses can run on premises if their requirements or preferences prevent them from accepting public cloud technology into their organizational infrastructure.
Another obvious question is, "What about connection security?" Wayk Now uses self-signed TLS 1.2 digital certificates to encrypt the traffic between the client and server systems. Devolutions told me they plan to integrate a built-in certificate authority (CA) in Wayk Den in the future.
The connection workflow
Go ahead and download Wayk Now for any of the following operating systems:
- Windows (32-bit and 64-bit)
- macOS
- Debian Linux
- iOS (client only)
- Android (client only)
To be explicit, the Allow Remote Control functionality refers to the Wayk Now server component, and the Take Remote Control functionality refers to the client component.
The Windows version can serve as a standalone executable or a locally installed MSI package. Here is the Wayk Now connection workflow:
- Start Wayk Now on the client device and share your Source ID and Password with your remote support professional.
- The remote support professional starts Wayk Now on her device, populates the Target ID, and initiates the connection.
- Depending on the security setup, either the remote support professional provides the connection password, or the client user accepts the connection request.
- The support professional now has a remote view of the client device desktop.
Let me show you some images to make this process crystal clear. In the first composite image, you see the client-side configuration on my Windows 10 computer named ODESKTOP (A). Next, you see me making a connection to ODESKTOP by specifying the Target ID (B).
Then you see I can choose between the Secure Remote Password (SRP) or Prompt for Permission (PFP) authentication options (C). If I choose PFP, then the user on ODESKTOP must approve the connection request (D).
Wayk Now connection process
What you can do once you're connected
Wayk Now Free Edition allows you to interact with the remote system in the same way you would with, say, the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) or Virtual Network Computing (VNC) protocol.
You can perform file transfers, share clipboard contents, and engage in chat communications.
With that said, you should know that Devolution sells an Enterprise Edition that unlocks more robust capabilities. See their Wayk Now comparison page for details, but check out the following composite screenshot for a visual:
A Wayk Now remote session
The biggest features the paid Enterprise edition brings to the table are:
- Concurrent connections (a must for any IT support desk)
- Support for Wayk Now On-Premises (coming soon)
- Remote execution
- Unattended access (coming soon)
- Technical support
Thanks to Wayk Den, I was able to establish remote support connections within my LAN, between my LAN and an internet-based host, and between two LANs, ignoring the NAT and port forwarding issues you'd normally have to contend with. It worked great!
In fact, here is a screenshot of me managing one of my Windows 10 boxes from my iPhone, courtesy of the Wayk Now iOS client:
Wayk Now iOS client
If you are a Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager (RDM) fan like I am, you'll be pleased to observe native support for Wayk Now connections.
Wayk Now in Remote Desktop Manager
Licensing and wrap-up
Let's discuss licensing. Wayk Now Free Edition is free both for consumer and business use, with no limits! The Enterprise edition has four license tiers:
- User license (per named user)
- Site license (unlimited users in a single site)
- Country license (unlimited users, multiple sites in a single country)
- Global license (unlimited users, multiple sites worldwide)
Devolutions uses a software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription model for product upgrades and technical support. See the Devolutions Store for more details.
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In summary, I find that Wayk Now is so good, I no longer need my LogMeIn subscription. Honestly, I don't know why I paid for that product for so many years. Wayk Now is a "no-brainer" remote access utility that supports all the major operating system platforms, and with Wayk Den, is no longer tricky to configure in disparate networking environments.
