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I've been tasked with connecting a computer in one of our branches in the midlands to one in south wales.

We have been using windows remote desktop but find it too slow. The ADSL on the computer were connecting to is about 6Mb Download and 470Kb Upload so not majorly fast. That connection is also shared with about 10 other internet users.

I'm trying to find out if the is any remote desktopn connecting software that performs better than the microsoft remote desktop software. Or, would i be better using a KVM over IP?

I've looked into connecting the offices through BT's fiber optic but at £21k a year rental were trying to find a cheaper solution!

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  • Have you turned down the desktop color to 16-bit? That can speed up performance considerably. Jul 28, 2010 at 16:40
  • ive even set it to 15-bit. With all other options turned off. Were employing someone who will be using this connection for the whole of there job so need it as responsive as possible. Thanks for the suggestion.
    – Dave
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:44
  • How about telnet? :)
    – user1931
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:55
  • Way back in the days....
    – r0ca
    Jul 28, 2010 at 17:03

7 Answers 7

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Have you checked out the advanced options of mstsc? I've connected smoothly to machines with 1m/250k connections.

Under the "Experience" tab you can choose to disable certain aspects of remote desktop. There are even presets for poor connections. I'd choose the lowest preset (56k modem) and then change color to 15 or 16-bit.

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  • yes as above comment. But thanks for your suggestion.
    – Dave
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:46
  • RDP (MSTSC) is definitly the best Remote software for WAN usage. There is a lot like SMS, Novell ConsoleOne, Proxy, logmein and so on...
    – r0ca
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:50
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In my personal experience I have found that LogMeIn service is faster/less jumpy than Windows Remote Desktop. It's at least worth a try since there is a free version.

No matter what you pick the bandwidth you have listed can be very limited depending on how much the network is stressed. You may want to consider buying a router which can reserve a specific amount of bandwidth for your remote computer.

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  • We use LogMeIn Rescue for customer support and it works fabulously.
    – Shinrai
    Jul 28, 2010 at 17:06
  • Yes we've decided to get a router with duel WAN and dedicate half the bandwidth to remote desktop or alternative.
    – Dave
    Jul 30, 2010 at 8:04
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I'd try TeamViewer.

It's fast, even when i use it from my mobile (iPhone) in a rural area with only an Edge connection.

No firewall configuration necessary, authentication is secure and on Windows there's a possibility to let it run as a service so it'll always be in the background waiting for a connection.

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  • This one actually surprises me everytime. Its a little pricey, but by far the best thing for off network remote access. Apr 16, 2013 at 18:28
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You could always switch to a VNC program which also has lots of options for saving speed.

UVNC <-My preference
RealVNC
TightVNC

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  • 1
    IMHO, VNC in general is much slower/buggier than RDP.
    – Dima
    Apr 16, 2013 at 18:00
  • VNC is 100% worse, laggier / buggier than RDP / TS. I would rather RDP to my house from the office several states away than VNC to anything on LAN, WAN, or over the web. Apr 16, 2013 at 18:26
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If you don't mind paying for it, Copilot (based around VNC) is awesome on slow connections. It wont make up for dialup, but it manages to constantly feel faster than I think it should.

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You can check out TurboSupport. It doesn’t cost as much as LogMeIn and other solutions but faster.

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LogMeIn is great, but everyone has overlooked NX by NoMachine, which provides commercial Citrix-like performance that runs more independently.

There is a free & open-source variant of NX named FreeNX, which is compatible: FreeNX website

The server-side is only for Linux & Solaris, so you can consider setting up FreeNX on the gateway of your target remote computer and then RDPing from the gateway to the remote computer. Having NX over the WAN (i.e. between you and the target remote computer's gateway) could yeild network & display performance.

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