Remote Desktop Question

[Speederlander]

On my network I have a gigabit connection through my router for my server and a secondary comp. I want to remote dektop into the server with decent performance. Getting the RD working is cake using the MS utility, but like all RD's I have used in the past, it's sorta laggy. Can this performance be improved with:

1. Different remote desktop software
2. Jumbo packets
3. Teaming ?

Is this a bandwidth issue or is it just inherent in MS remote desktop to be a laggy? Teaming/jumbo frames would require a supporting NIC on my smaller (non-server) comp so I wanted to ask before I bought.

Thanks.

[Computurd]

I am not sure if it is bandwidth or not but i use a gigabit router, cat6 cable and a gigabit switch, i have had no issues with lagging and doing remote desktop with my windows home server.

[IFMU]

Not sure on the exacts of what you're using, but have you tried realvnc? I've used it on occasion and it worked pretty well for me.

[Serra]

I don't think a faster network connection is likely to help (unless your realized throughput is that much smaller). I think a lot of remote desktop frames don't even hit 1500 bytes (someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) so jumbo frames may/may not help.

In the end I find it's as much about the processing power on both ends as anything. Not that it's very intensive, but you have to consider that for every twitch you make on the mouse at your end your computer has to receive it, determine to send it to the remote desktop, encrypt the message, create a packet, transmit it... then the reverse takes place on the other side. It's a lot of work for just a bit of work. I don't know if processing power is the right term though, maybe processing latency.

I also found Vista to handle RD much better than XP as a server, but that's just in limited subjective testing.

[ramfan]

its most likly somthing else i had a old dell poweredge 2400 as my server for years on a 100Mb lan and never had a problem with RD even through the internet
are you running a server os on it?
if your not to need to change a bunch of settings so it can preform better for network applications

[yngndrw]

I use remote desktop across the internet and it performs very well. Not perfectly lag free, but more than acceptable. For this reason I'd also very much doubt that the connection is the problem. In fact I found it to be better than VNC.

What versions are you using ? I've been using Vista + Server 2008 so it could be that older versions are not as good. It could also possibly be the server's hardware.

[stevecs]

I use RDP often at work (my desktop is a multi-monitor 'head' where I remote desktop into a vmware server as my primary system). Anyway, I have not seen any 'performance' improvement from using 802.3ad (link aggregation) (I DO use it for redundancy/availability but it doesn't aid performance). Likewise even at 100Mbit it's fine (even though I do have Gbit networking). The biggest benefits was to cut down colour depth (i.e. don't use 24bit colour, use 15bit or less) as that cuts down the number of bytes sent between the client/system. Also making sure that your RDP server itself is not swaping (I turn off swap completely on the systems and load it up with memory, the vmware server 'guest' that I use has 4GiB of ram to it which is plenty for at least my needs (numerous spreadsheets, outlook, visio, firewall management consoles (checkpoint, adsm, et al)) numerous web browsers (firefox/i.e./opera) open office).

Anyway to sum up the best 'bangs' for the buck were: get a good accelerated graphics card for your head system (local box); turn off swap and add memory to your remote system; cut down colour depth and lastely turn off any RDP features that you don't need (sound forwarding, drive/printer/et al sharing).

[winstontj]

^^^ This

I also use RDT as my main way to connect on a day to day basis (the netbook is an amazing invention). OP have you tried to click the advanced tab and change the experience settings. I keep things like Font Smoothing, Desktop Background and Show Contents of Windows When Dragging all unchecked even over a gigabit connection.

Also - I'd stay away from VNC and anything else that's internet based. Are you using a VPN or going over the internet or is this all internal? Have you tried connecting to the computer via your internal static IP rather than using your external IP/Internet? I port forward and external port to my internal PCs so I know what I'm connecting to and I notice a big difference in speed connecting as my internal xx.xx.xx.xx IP versus my external xx.xx.xx.xx:xx IP:port.

Stevecs: Do you know any way to have RDT display multi monitors? Not mstsc /span but actually open up two windows if I connect to a workstation with dual monitors? I'd like to have a RDT session across two monitors where I can maximize two applications each on it's own screen.

[stevecs]

@winstontj not built into RDP itself, though I have used seamlessrdp (my desktop head is running linux) and you can run seamlessrdp to have each application run in a separate window and move things around that way to each monitor locally. I don't use it anymore I have instead created a 7 monitor local desktop (1680x1050 for the local unix machine, and then 6 1280x1020 in 3x2 config that are merged into a 3840x2048 screen that I use for my RDP 'desktop'. On the remote vmware server I use splitview which I tell it to carve up into 1280x1024 sizes so I can put different apps on each monitor that way. Then also use compiz to run multiple RDP's and just rotate the local display cube when I want to switch to different desktop's. RDP has a max of 4096x2048 as display. If you want more than that you have to use VNC. Remote Admin has problems with large screens as well.

[gillll]

you can lower the color to 16 or 8 bit.
and disable themes and such.

but if u r on the same lan then it might be the router itself i don't think it's a server issue.