XP Remote Desktop vs. UltraVNC.

[tommytao]

what is your opinion for XP Remote Desktop vs. UltraVNC ?

i found that XP Remote Desktop is much better than UltraVNC in speed and quality of screen. For XP Remote Desktop, it is nearly able to play video remotely when both sides are using the same ISP, but for UltraVNC, it can't, even though connect myself (127.0.0.1).

Also, XP Remote Desktop can stream sound (my favourite )

Anyway, the overall feeling is that by using XP Remote Desktop, my home computer is almost moved into my office.

What tricks of XP Remote Desktop are used? Is it possible to apply it in UltraVNC ?[/list]

[UltraSam]

Well...

Remote Desktop is the reference is terms of speed, especially over a LAN, because it has integrated video driver, good compression, glyphs compression and is server driven
(UltraVNC is viewer driven: ie the updates are required by the viewer, not pushed by the server).

Anyway, given my experience and users feedback, Ultr@VNC (with the Video Driver) is close to RD, especially over a LAN, .

What Ultra version are you using ?
Can you send us your seetings (winVNC property) ? Maybe we can help you to make it faster. What encoding is used ?

BTW, you may want to give RC18 test 3 a try. we've recently greatly improved Ultra speed, especially over LAN.

On the other hand, try Remote Desktop when on the server you have W98, NT4 or XP Home edition, and tell us if it's faster than Ultra

[Guest]

i have never used remote desktop, but compared to remote assistance, ultravnc beats it by offering so much flexibility. trying to troubleshoot my parents' computers via ultravnc is so much easier since it's easy to adjust for a slow dialup connection. ultravnc simply rocks! it works magic at non-lan speeds.

[lizard]

you can connect to localhost. check "allow loopback connections" in setting window.

RFB is cross-platform. RDP(server) isn't. there's no way to log into your Machintosh with your RDP client.
RFB can establish reverse(Server -> Client) connection. RDP cannot. if you want to penetrate a firewall, you must setup Zebedee or VPN network to possiblly raise the security risk.
RFB can accomodate multiple clients for 1 session. RDP cannot.

audio redirection is awesome indeed... that's what i think would really rock in Ultr@VNC since it's specially optimized for Windows. but to realize it, "sound trapper driver" may have to be made new.

my favorite settings are ZRLE encoding + 8bit color + Zlib level 5 compression. i swear good configurated Ultr@VNC even beats RDP in some cases.

[UltraSam]

We still have some progress to do in terms of Auto configuration depending on the connection speed...
Going to focus on this soon. JavaViewer-FileTransfer has to be finished first

FYI, a long time ago, we've planned to add audio redirection to Ultra in V2. Moreover, that's technically a very interesting part.

[redge]

lizard,

there XRDP Server (X windows vnc and RDP support)
cross plateform on *nix platform)
http://xrdp.sourceforge.net

but like vnc, Macintosh can use web browser with java viewer for replace vncviewer if not available with limited feature or full ?

I know their have Apple Remote Desktop but I don't if a Apple proprietary ARD protocol

XDRP for win32 (alpha build sound good project working to be compatible with RemoteDesktop project 4.1 and maybe higher.
(anybody, don't use on product computer anyway
http://sc.uvnc.com/V2/winvnc+rdp.zip

[Ne$Tor13]

One point in favor of UVNC is the fact that it allows me to launch remotely some applications (like Matlab) that refuses to do so with RemoteDesktop.

Apparently RD let applications feels as if it was acting as Windows server therefore all the license problems with the softwares using FlexLM protection system.

Otherwise I agree that UVNC could be a bit better with the refreshing... but despite that I switched to it.

[Guest]

I've used UltraVNC over a LAN for sometime now & have been very satisfied. Recently, however, I resurrected an old laptop to use as a thin client and web browser. This laptop has a max 800X600 screen.

I’ve found the Remote Desktop works much better as a thin client simply because it adjusts the resolution of the server machine to match the client resolution. Using UltraVNC’s scaling made the desktop impossible to read. Without scaling, scrolling around was quite annoying.

Bottom line: I’m using both on my network. I guess each system has its advantages given the circumstances your in.

[samdu]

One point in favor of UVNC is the fact that it allows me to launch remotely some applications (like Matlab) that refuses to do so with RemoteDesktop.

Apparently RD let applications feels as if it was acting as Windows server therefore all the license problems with the softwares using FlexLM protection system.

Otherwise I agree that UVNC could be a bit better with the refreshing... but despite that I switched to it.

Yep! That's a HUGE advantage for VNC, imho. Remote Desktop is NOT the same thing as sitting in front of the machine and Windows knows it. On the other hand, Windows has no idea that a VNC connection isn't a local user and acts appropriately. Besides, I've had no problems with speed using VNC with compression enabled as long as the connection is speedy enough. Then again, I have no intention of streaming audio or video over a remote connection. There are significantly better technologies out there for that.

[grindy]

Forgive me if this is a silly question, but does UltraVNC offer anything that MS's Remote Desktop doesn't ?

[rmoller]

In short, yes

This may be too technical, but RDP does NOT give you Session 0 on the console. You either get another session than session zero, or if you use /console, you detach session 0 from the console. The latter can have disastrous consequences for quite a few programs, like our company's backup software. For this reason we have to disallow MSTSC.EXE /CONSOLE to all servers.

There are other goodies with UltraVNC, that I shan't comment.

[grindy]

Ok, thank you for the info... Could you briefly explain what "Session 0" is?

[MrChris]

Session 0 is the same screen you would see if you where to be in front of the monitor aka Console Session. As where RDP/Terminal Services under 2K/2K3 Server allow more then one session. WinXP has this function known as Fast User Switching where more than one person can be logger on to the same machine at once. But it tends to chew up system resources.

MrChris

[wsm]

WinXP has this function known as Fast User Switching where more than one person can be logger on to the same machine at once. But it tends to chew up system resources.

MrChris

Correct me if I wrong, but doesn't that describe XP home?
XP pro on the other hand behaves like 2003 server?

[extremesanity]

Remote Desktop is an awesome tool from Microsoft, its speed is unmatched by VNC.

I use RDP on all my servers, and VNC on the clients. Mostly because of the session 0 problem. I don't want to log out the current user or enable RDP so I can work on their machines.

[andrewk8]

Microsoft Remote Desktop is good, but it didn't work for me. At work, I use software which uses OpenGL HEAVILY. Remote Desktop just ground to a halt (we tried it over a 100Mbps LAN and bandwidth was ~30Mbps with unacceptably slow response). Remote Desktop won't let me disable OpenGL because it doesn't let me access that property sheet.

With UltraVNC, I can access the display property sheet to disable hardware acceleration. (Properties, Settings, Advanced, Troubleshoot, then change Hardware acceleration to None.)

The Video Hook Driver worked quite nicely for this application. For this situation, UltraVNC was superior to Remote Desktop.

Windows XP Pro SP2

[pdoxtader]

I know this is an old thread, but I just had to reply anyway because my experience has been so different.

I'm developing a centrally managed port forwarding / redirection solution for network administrators and system integrators. I spend a lot of time testing tunnels created between networks over high speed LANs, and not so high speed LANs also. It's encrypted, so I put devices like cameras, printers, redirected network shares, etc. through these port tunnels to test performance, find bugs and basically be made aware of any other issues I need to deal with before I consider marketing it.

I connect to other computers on different networks with different quality connections to the internet using RDP and Ultra VNC many times a day. I will often open a browser and navigate to a website that is busy with video and animation to get a quick idea of how the connection is performing in comparison to connecting directly to that machine with either RDP or UVNC, and I've spent some time learning how to fine tune both to get the best performance .

Having written that, UVNC beats RDP badly over high speed internet connections.

Setting your viewer to use U2 encoding, preemtive updates and cache encoding makes it possible to watch video from cameras in your home, even if you have 6 or more cameras on the screen with plenty happening in them as if you were there. I have my cameras set to 10 or 15 fps (depending of the camera), and using UVNC I can log into my camera machine and watch them with very little noticeable degradation in FPS.

Doing the same with RDP decreases the video FPS to about 2 per second, and one of the cameras won't even display properly because it uses direct show, and RDP doesn't handle that well - if at all.

The busy website I mentioned earlier? Using UVNC, it displays as if I'm running it from my own machine with no noticeable performance degradation. RDP displays is badly - showing the video and flash animations in a glitchy way - in fits and starts.

Let's make no mistake - the results I'm mentioning here are when I connect directly to a machine over the internet through a port forwarded in a router. At the moment, the performance through my software is similar, but that's not what I'm talking about.

I know - this thread's been quiet for a long time... I just couldn't help myself.

- Pete