Improving remote desktop within remote desktop experience

Question

I work as a software-consultant. My current customer is located 3.5 hours away by train so I often work remotely from the local office of my company.

Acessing my customer's systems is done through a "jump-host" which is a computer on their network I have been granted Remote Desktop access to, from there I can then remote desktop again into my development machine.

It works all-right, but far from "native"-experience, which I miss. Train rides do have internet, but often poor connection and speed.

Also switching between remote desktops from within the "jump-host" is a pain, as I'm just using Windows Remote Desktop client. It also poses other difficulties as using multiple monitors etc.

Does anyone have some ideas to improve the experience?

Answer 1

Remote Desktop by default is tolerant to low bandwidth usage, as the image is compressed in the conversation.

Removing the background image of the remote host often help, disabling audio and non necessary redirection, like printer too help, but sadly after that you have only some small options;

1- ask them a direct connection to the server.

2- use your cellular network if available from the train.

3- Dont share the clipboard, as the data is transfered back and forth.

4- Use a lower DPI, like 16bit and not 32bit.

5- if cost mean nothing and you can install something; a riverbed kind of appliance install, it will optimize and compress the data

The reason that I have no much ressource is by default an open rdp connection use like 4kps, open a youtube video and you fall to 900kps, so the use make a big differance

Answer 2

There's not a whole lot you can do to improve the RDP in RDP experience, especially on a low bandwidth high latency connection. But two things do come to mind:

• Use PowerShell remoting, when possible. Text requires far less bandwidth than graphics and this is much better suited for high latency, low bandwidth connections than a full RDP experience.

• The client should get rid of the jump host by using a proper VPN, IPv6, or both. This would eliminate the need to use RDP-in-RDP, not to mention improve the client's own network significantly and probably solve a lot of other problems.