recommendations for alternatives to rdp

[Robin Paulson]

an associate of mine is working on a project which requires remote
connections to a server from a tablet. they are currently using rdp,
which they have identified as a bottleneck, and are looking for
something better.

can anyone recommend a free/open protocol which will perform better?

cheers,

[yuri]

Post by Robin Paulson
an associate of mine is working on a project which requires remote
connections to a server from a tablet. they are currently using rdp, which
they have identified as a bottleneck, and are looking for something better.
can anyone recommend a free/open protocol which will perform better?

Does it have to be GUI? If not, ssh?

Yuri de Groot

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[Tomislav]

Post by Robin Paulson
an associate of mine is working on a project which requires remote
connections to a server from a tablet. they are currently using rdp,
which they have identified as a bottleneck, and are looking for
something better.
can anyone recommend a free/open protocol which will perform better?
cheers,

If they need to connect to *NIX they are in luck with NX

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_technology

If it's a Windows or OS X machine then you're doomed to VNC which is
glitchy and not all that fast. If they _really_ need something better
than RDP then there is always TeamViewer. Good but not free.

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[Robin Paulson]

Post by Tomislav
If they need to connect to *NIX they are in luck with NX

windows server unfortunately. some bright spark built the application
in access...

Post by Tomislav
If it's a Windows or OS X machine then you're doomed to VNC which is
glitchy and not all that fast.

hmm, ok

Post by Tomislav
If they _really_ need something better
than RDP then there is always TeamViewer. Good but not free.

isn't teamviewer negotiated by third-party server? or can it connect
direct? sounds like it might add some lag if it is

[Tomislav]

Post by Tomislav
If they need to connect to *NIX they are in luck with NX

windows server unfortunately. some bright spark built the application in
access...

Post by Tomislav
If it's a Windows or OS X machine then you're doomed to VNC which is
glitchy and not all that fast.

hmm, ok

Post by Tomislav
If they _really_ need something better
than RDP then there is always TeamViewer. Good but not free.

isn't teamviewer negotiated by third-party server? or can it connect
direct? sounds like it might add some lag if it is

You can use it to connect to IP addresses in a LAN and it doesn't seem
to be slower than RDP. That said, I've mostly used it through slow
connections so I can't compare the two.

And the Android app looks nice and polished.

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[Mark Foster]

Post by Robin Paulson

Post by Tomislav
If they need to connect to *NIX they are in luck with NX

windows server unfortunately. some bright spark built the application
in access...

RDP is actually fairly decent, IMHO; why's it being identified as a
bottleneck?

I concur with earlier posts, there aren't many alternatives out there,
even VNC doesn't work well on multi-user systems; at least RDP gives you
a virtual desktop which can be used multiple times and relatively easily
secured for individual-level passwords, where VNC by default will use a
single-password and give you just the console. (And RDP will give you
the console too if you use the switch for it.)

Requiring a GUI level interaction with a remote server is inefficient in
itself, unless the machine is built for it (ala Citrix) which is why SSH
is such a powerful server-admin tool...

Mark.

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[David Pando]

Post by Robin Paulson
an associate of mine is working on a project which requires remote
connections to a server from a tablet. they are currently using rdp, which
they have identified as a bottleneck, and are looking for something better.
can anyone recommend a free/open protocol which will perform better?

I've always heard that in terms of performance and bandwidth efficiency RDP
is quite superior to its alternatives as VNC than transmit the complete
bitmap.
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[Matthew Poole]

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Post by Robin Paulson
an associate of mine is working on a project which requires remote
connections to a server from a tablet. they are currently using
rdp, which they have identified as a bottleneck, and are looking
for something better.
can anyone recommend a free/open protocol which will perform
better?
cheers,

The short answer is, if you need a full-service GUI there is *nothing*
better than RDP. If you just need to serve single applications there's
Citrix, but that's not free, or open, or even included with every
Windows system since XP.
If CLI is sufficient, SSH. Or there's always some kind of web app.

Sorry, but they're stuck with RDP. And if they think RDP is a
bottleneck they probably need to reconsider their aims, because I've
had RDP running across 256/128 ADSL and it's been quite usable.

- --
Matthew Poole
"The difference between theory and practice is that practice is much
easier in theory than theory is in practice."
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[Jim Cheetham]

Post by Matthew Poole
Sorry, but they're stuck with RDP. And if they think RDP is a
bottleneck they probably need to reconsider their aims, because I've
had RDP running across 256/128 ADSL and it's been quite usable.

+1. RDP is very efficient in network terms, perhaps the bottleneck is
an inefficient implementation on the tablet device?

Another option could be the 2x application server, http://www.2x.com/
This should be capable of floating one single application out across
RDP, instead of the whole desktop. Alex King has implemented this
quite happily for some of his customers, IIRC.

There are now Intel BIOSs coming out with RealVNC onboard; not sure
how that works in practice but it sounds scary.

-jim

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[Michael Field]

Post by Matthew Poole
Sorry, but they're stuck with RDP. And if they think RDP is a
bottleneck they probably need to reconsider their aims, because I've
had RDP running across 256/128 ADSL and it's been quite usable.

I concur. The issues I have is that every application now seems to render the entire window as bitmaps, and you can't turn this off. Java apps seems to be the worst for this, then (strangely enough) the web browser interfaces of big ERP systems...

If your users are trying to access media-rich content or play Angry Birds over RDP of course RDP will be the problem - just contrast the bandwidth of a 8xPCIe 64Gb/sec connection with that of a 54Mb wireless....

Ways that work around this disparity usually involve data compression which adds to the latency and increases CPU demand at both ends...

Mike


- --
Matthew Poole
"The difference between theory and practice is that practice is much
easier in theory than theory is in practice."
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[Robin Paulson]

Post by Michael Field
I concur. The issues I have is that every application now seems to
render the entire window as bitmaps, and you can't turn this off.
Java
apps seems to be the worst for this, then (strangely enough) the web
browser interfaces of big ERP systems...
If your users are trying to access media-rich content or play Angry
Birds over RDP of course RDP will be the problem - just contrast the
bandwidth of a 8xPCIe 64Gb/sec connection with that of a 54Mb
wireless....
Ways that work around this disparity usually involve data compression
which adds to the latency and increases CPU demand at both ends...

hmm, interesting. no, they're not doing games, it's for business
applications which aren't at all graphics intensive

i have a feeling there's a misunderstanding of the technology
somewhere.

the same person told me they were looking at using the Windows iPad as
a platform, so that option has always been close to the front of my mind

[Jaco]

Post by Robin Paulson
can anyone recommend a free/open protocol which will perform better?

I do quite a bit of remote-support work, so I've had a swing at most of
them.
(I've given Citrix's solutions, but I really don't like it at all)

As per the other comments (which I read very quickly), I'd have to
concur that RDP is pretty decent (way better than VNC IMHO) in most
cases. If you're concerned about the Libre aspect, try xrdp - making no
promises there.
The only case where this has not been the case is where you can pull the
app through via (compressed) remote-X over a local LAN.

TeamViewer comes highly recommended - especially from a complexity
p.o.v. It's simple for laymen end-users to download, run (no install
required), provide the ID & PWD over phone & go from there (does P2P
after the initial setup), & works a charm in Wine to boot.
I see skype apparently does this now too.
Mikogo works in a similar fashion, but is a bit more complicated

As for client, I use either Remmina (as my multi-protocol client in
Ubuntu) or mRemoteNG as my windows client (both FLOSS).

Some other candidates to consider (clients & servers - grabbed from my
internal wiki, so please excuse formatting):


Control & Screen-sharing

* SSH
* XDMCP (Remote-X)
* VNC
o ThinVNC <http://www.supportsmith.com/ThinVNC/HTML5-VNC.aspx>- HTML5
* RDP
o http://www.xrdp.org/
* TeamViewer <https://www.teamviewer.com/>
* Mikogo <http://www.mikogo.com/>
* ShowMyPC <http://showmypc.com/>
* SkyFex <https://skyfex.com/>
* CrossLoop <http://www.crossloop.com/>
* NoMachine NX <http://www.nomachine.com/>orFreeNX
<https://freenx.berlios.de/>
* PC Anywhere /LogMeIn <https://secure.logmein.com/>


Conferencing & Presentation

* YuuGuu <http://www.yuuguu.com/>
* DimDim <http://www.dimdim.com/>
* GoToMeeting <http://www.gotomeeting.com/>


Clients

* Terminal Server Client
* Remmina <http://remmina.sourceforge.net/>


References & Resources

* NX
o https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FreeNX
o https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NomachineNX



Best of luck - let me know if I should add anything to my collection

- J
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[Les Ferguson]

I don't think this is the place to be discussing RDP (but here I go anyway) have you investigated optimisation tips etc for it? I remember somebody saying there can be some initial slowness to do with ticking too many of the options; sharing your local printers, USB devices etc across the connection to the machine you are accessing. Haven't done any trials to confirm this.