Remote access

You can reach a device’s command line or its web interface from the browser. The connection is made by a gateway in the device’s region, so the device never has to be reachable from the internet, and a stored password never reaches your browser. To put your own computer on a customer’s network instead, and use your own tools there, see How the VPN works.

Opening a terminal or a web interface needs the device:remote_access permission; see Give your team and your customers access. Every session’s start and end are written to the activity log.

Terminal

Open the device and choose the Terminal tab. It’s there when the device has an SSH, Telnet, or console connection with a credential, and it needs a gateway online in the device’s region.

SSH, Telnet, and console sessions log in for you with the stored credential.

A session closes after 5 minutes without activity; choose Reconnect to start another.

A device’s web interface

Choose the Web UI tab, then Connect to web UI. It’s there when the device has an HTTP or HTTPS connection. The device’s own pages open inside Witina, with Refresh, Expand, and Disconnect. When the device’s credential is a username and password, the gateway signs in for you.

Serial consoles

To reach a device’s serial console through a console server, or through a serial port on another host:

1. Open the device and choose Connections, then Add method.
2. For Session type, choose Console.
3. Under Console server, pick a server you’ve already added, or choose + New SSH console server or + New Telnet console server and enter its Server name, Host, Port, and Server credential. Each console port is its own entry.
4. For a serial port on a host you reach over SSH, enter the Command that opens it, for example minicom --device /dev/ttyS1.
5. Choose the Device credential the console should log in with.

Jump hosts and proxies

A transport is a host or proxy a gateway connects through. To create one, go to Transports and choose Create transport. Choose its Transport type (SSH Tunnel, HTTP Proxy, SOCKS5, or Telnet), and enter its Name, Host, Port, and Region, and a Credential if it needs one.

Available now: console connections. An SSH Tunnel or Telnet transport is the console server a console connection goes through; see Serial consoles.

Coming shortly. The rest is being finished and will be available shortly:

• SSH, Telnet, and web interface connections through a transport. For now these connect directly from the gateway, so leave their Transport set to None (direct).
• Chained jump hosts, by choosing another transport as the Parent transport.
• HTTP Proxy and SOCKS5 transports. Until then, a connection set to use one is skipped, and the device’s other connections keep working.

Session recordings

Every terminal session is recorded, along with the sessions Witina opens itself to set up devices and apply changes. Open the device and choose the Recordings tab to watch them, at speeds from 0.5× to 10×.

Recordings keep what the device sends back, not what’s typed. Devices echo the commands you type, so a recording reads the way the session looked, but passwords typed at hidden prompts are never captured. On a device Witina recognizes, secrets it prints, such as those in its running config, are redacted on the gateway. Anyone who can see the device can watch its recordings, and each playback is written to the activity log.

Web interface captures

When Witina doesn’t recognize a device, it may offer to record a browsing session of the device’s web interface, to help us add support for it. You can also start one with Record on the Web UI tab.

• Nothing is recorded unless you agree.
• Passwords, cookies, and tokens are removed on the gateway.
• The capture stays on the gateway until you choose Share with support or Delete it. If you do neither, it’s deleted after 24 hours.
• A shared capture is kept for 90 days.