Cisco ASA Configurations for Newbies : Enabling Remote Desktop / Terminal Services
One of the things I needed to do at work was to give myself remote desktop capability to a terminal server on my networks for off-site administration.
To do this, I logged into my ASA 5505 and used the following commands:
access-list acl_out permit icmp any any
access-list acl_out permit tcp any interface outside eq 3389
global (outside) 1 interface
static (inside,outside) tcp interface 3389 Terminal-Server-IP 3389 netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0
access-group acl_out in interface outside
On one of my devices, I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working, but it turned out that I had forgotten the last command which enables the access-list on the outside interface.
One important note here is that you should make sure the name “acl_out” is appropriate for your configuration. If you’re not sure, you can use “show access-list” to figure it out. Also, make sure you replace “Terminal-Server-IP” with the internal IP address of your server.
Oh and this isn’t exclusive to Remote Desktop either… you can replace 3389 with any port needed (ie 80 for web or 110 for POP, etc).