After generating .htaccess with the option to allow access to xml-rpc server, I cannot backup with Remote. I get the 403 forbidden error. When I revert the .htaccess back to what I had, I can connect and back-up fine.
I took a look at the .htaccess code and do see the section:
## Explicitly allow access only to XML-RPC's xmlrpc/index.php or plain xmlrpc/ directory
RewriteRule ^(xmlrpc/index\.php)$ $1 [L]
RewriteRule ^xmlrpc/(.*)$ - [F,L]