Remote desktop over 500ms latency: What is the best client to use?

Question

We have a very slow RDP session from NYC to India (500ms) and we are looking for a client that will withstand this latency.

What do you recommend in this circumstance? Is there a better remote desktop solution that handles this type of connection? Perhaps one that is optimised for satellite connections.

Solution 1

SSH may be an option for some tasks. The command-line is much tolerant of latency.

Solution 2

A better connection. Point. No client can fix that.

We have sometimes 600ms and people complain - line overlaod.

Basically, the latency is there. All input is delayed 500ms. A client can not magically handle that. This is like asking "I like driving faster than allowed, what car color will help me not getting tickets".

Solution 3

In my experience the best tools for high latency are Teamviewer (choose slow connection settings in the upper bar) or Remmina (same thing).

Solution 4

Since latency is the culprit there is not much an application can do to improve this.

The best bet is if you are using RDP then change the experience settings. Uncheck the allows for everything... "desktop background, font smoothing, visual styles, etc..." Also under local resources uncheck remote audio and under 'Display' display settings High Color 16bit.

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Comments

[symcbean]

-1: using less bandwidth does not reduce latency, at 0.5 seconds delay, a GUI is pretty much unusable.

[Antoine Benkemoun]

+1. Network latency is network latency, nothing "software-y" you can do about it.

[WheresAlice]

Maybe as a stopgap solution, but working over an ssh connection with bad latency is horrible and it's not giving the nice gui environment that is required.

[JGurtz]

Anything will be somewhat "horrible" with high latency. I would say SSH is quite a bit less horrible than a gui in this situation since it is at least deterministic. But, if your application requires a gui interface then you have only two choices: fix the app, or fix the latency. Sorry about that.

[JGurtz]

Big +1 for mosh! It even handles disconnect well, making it a good screen replacement on top of it!