Windows 7/Vista – Can I change the default listening port of Remote Assistance
[Symptom] Can I change the default listening port of Remote Assistance ?
[Explanation] The answer is no, this is by design behavior.
· Remote Assistance uses the DCOM port (135) only to allow DCOM communication for remote launching of RA on the novice side – which in turn opens Remote Assistance listeners on the novice machine.
· These listeners are opened on dynamically chosen ports. In Vista/Win 7 there really is no way to configure this range in any way. What we do suggest is instead of using port based exceptions, add an exception to allow traffic from “msra.exe” from your firewall.
· Remote Assistance is using dynamic ports from the port range starting at 49152 and ending at 65535.
[Suggestion ]
· Consult Firewall Vendors, there may have a mechanism to look for those RPC Packets and dynamically open the negotiated port. (as long as the Firewall Device is configured to do so)
[Reference]
The default dynamic port range for TCP/IP has changed in Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008