RDP session is slow

Question

So I am connecting to my work computer from home and the Remote Desktop Connection app is annoyingly slow.

I pinged my work pc from my computer and it returned at a reasonable time of 50ms~ with 0 loss. I then attempted to ping my home IP from the RDP session and it timed out every time. Not sure if this might help anyone come to a conclusion but hopefully it does. Note I am also using it in conjunction with Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client if that helps at all. Work is Windows 7 and Home is Windows 8

I attempted switching off my home pc's firewall but that did nothing.

Any assistance would be great, surely a setting in the RDP file might make it run a little smoother.

I'll edit this post with further attempts at fixes below

Solution 1

Did three things and now RDP is running screaming fast:

1. Change RDP settings:

2. Run the RDP session and connect to the remote machine

3. Find mstcsc.exe in the Task Manager and and set priority to Realtime

Solution 2

Our remote chain is Citrix then RDP, target machine is Win 10. I solved this issue by changing the mouse pointer scheme to None and disabling the pointer shadow.

Solution 3

I installed Ubuntu server XRDP. Went through Windows and terribly slowed down. I solved this problem. In the /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini file, change crypt_level=high to crypt_level=None

Comments

[Joe C]

Depends on your bandwidth more than ping response time. One thing I found greatly improves RDP in my experience is to set the host computers background to solid color black.

[David Hoelzer]

I'm not seeing the programming connection here...

[SharpCode]

@JoeC didn't work for me :( but good tip anyway the image i had as my desktop was longer to load thats certain.

[mikey]

Can you please provide some more details? Are you remoting into a Ubuntu server from a Windows computer?

[Kairat Koibagarov]

Yes. I logged in remotely into a Ubuntu server from a Windows computer. By default, the Ubuntu server XRDP encrypts traffic.

[mikey]

Thank you @Kairat Koibagarov , I don't have permissions to edit this xrdp.ini file and I'm afraid to sudo chmod in these files that I'm not familiar with. I'll check with IT.

[Sylvain Gantois]

Changing the size of 'Display Configuration' to something smaller also has a huge impact. Not the most practical but much more responsive.

[Kevin_Kinsey]

Since we've left Windows-land, I'll chime in on "xfreerdp" ... I've solved slow connection issues with the "/network:broadband", "/network:broadband-low", and "/network:modem" options.