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Many questions:

Why did you choose TightVNC? Why not RealVNC, UltraVNC, or TridiaVNC?

Is it better to pay for VNC software, like Tridia VNC Pro or Radmin? Which software has video resolution scaling of the remote desktop?

What security is best? Is it good to use a VPN for secure access, or is SSH better? What Windows SSH server do you use?

What VPN hardware is best? We bought a NetGear FVS318 hardware firewall/router/VPN for a customer, and discovered that the remote administration password is openly transmitted. We found that logging out in the remote administration menu didn't always actually log out. We found Javascript errors. With the 2.4 firmware, more than one client can be logged in at the same time. That situation, two clients at the same time, would give an error message with the 2.3 firmware, so things seem to be going backward in some ways, in firmware that is already shaky. Our experience with Netgear technical support is that it is very limited. On the telephone we got someone in Tamil Nadu, India, who was allowed to practice for a short time with Netgear equipment, but who doesn't any longer have access to actual equipment. The online tech support just gave error messages. Not only that, but Fry's and Netgear arranged a rebate trick. They have a very long rebate receipt, and ask you to enter your address both at the top and at the bottom. If you don't enter it at the bottom, they deny your rebate.

TridiaVNC is been doing it for years now. It took me a while to figure out how to make the java component to work, with noone to help me (hint: I went to websites that had the component installed and copied their html)

There's already a company doing this: TridiaVNC

http://www.tridiavnc.com/ have been providing
a free and commercial VNC for quite a while.

I don't know there relationship to the original
developers.

1) AT&T Labs has not released a significant version of VNC for a little while now, yet VNC development continues on many fronts. These efforts will therefore not cease just because the AT&T Lab goes away. Examples of non-AT&T projects involving VNC:

ChromiVNC (MacOS 7.5/9.x server) - maintained by myself, Jonathan Morton.

VNCThing (MacOS Carbon viewer) - maintained by Dair Grant.

OSXVNC (MacOS X server)

TightVNC (ultra-efficient Win32 and UNIX servers and viewers) - maintained by Constantin Kaplinsky.

TridiaVNC (semi-commercial Win32 and UNIX servers and viewers) - maintained by Tridia Corporation.

A large number of independent viewers, as well as a few servers, for minority and hand-held platforms are also available.

Each of the above is independent of the AT&T Labs, although most use at least some of the AT&T code.

2) Most people who use VNC seriously, use the independent versions because they are noticeably further advanced than the AT&T versions. In fact, generally progress on the AT&T versions has been limited to occasional bugfixes for some years.

3) Support for most versions of VNC (but not normally TridiaVNC, for which commercial support from Tridia is available) is primarily conducted on a central mailing list, currently operated from an AT&T server. The posting rate from AT&T representatives or developers is very low. As a group, VNC developers are currently discussing where to move the support list to ensure it's continued operation.

This is all made possible by the GPL.

1. Closing AT&T Labs UK would not change much in the VNC status. The "official" VNC was unsupported for years, and currently it lacks important features available in the derived products. Today, there is no much sense to use the official VNC distribution at all. For example, TightVNC is much more advanced in many aspects.
2. The development on the VNC code base was never stopped. Many people issued various ports and additions, and currently there is at least two major projects maintaining VNC-derived code bases: TightVNC and TridiaVNC. TightVNC is free, TridiaVNC includes both free and commercial versions.
3. Being the maintainer of TightVNC, I can say that the code base is in the state of active development, the latest version was released on March 24, 2002, and the next version is to be released in May. And I have no plans to stop the development.
4. The TightVNC project is open to contributors, so I don't see a reason to create another branch from the "official" VNC sources.

tridiavnc and its companion developers site , have integrated tight and jpg encoding in their version, plus added an acceptable windows installer.

I use PCAnywhere a lot for managing machines over a VPN, and I would kill myself if I had to use a system like this to do what this person is talking about. Unless you're running the PCAnywhere (or VNC) server on a really fast machine, and your network connection is at least 10base-T, you're going to hate working through this because of the lag-time in the UI.

Try TightVNC, which is TridiaVNC plus JPEG compression and "Tight" compression, minus the support and fee structure of the commerical TridaVNC (TridiaVNC does have a free, non supported version). Claims are of > 25% improvement over VNC's Zlib encoding.

I've found that it works reasonably well over broadband with highest compression, though the JPEG compression takes a toll on CPU and image quality at the highest levels. 10base-T is just about like being there, and dial-up is usable for short periods of time. Anything more, and you'll want to just jump in the car though.

To be honest, for managing Windows 2000 servers, I usually use the MS Terminal Services Advanced Client. It's accessible through a web browser and is pretty responsive over dial-up or broadband. When I need access to the actual desktop session (Term Services satrts a new session on the server) to see error messages or such, I use VNC-X, which is an ActiveX VNC client. I simply add it to the same page that I launch TSAC from and have 1-click access to any server through either VNC or TSAC. (Hey, maybe I should patent that!)

TridiaVNC includes TightVNC.

If you go to the viewer and click on Options, you'll see it as the first option. It includes (in TridiaVNC 1.5.4 anyway) TightVNC 1.2.2 (which is the latest TightVNC anyway). TightVNC was based off of TridiaVNC, so I guess they're using each of the other's sources.

I prefer TridiaVNC. TridiaVNC Pro is good as well. It includes TridiaVNC, but adds in other features such as authenticating off of an NT domain and such. Good for those M$ users out there.

I personally use TridiaVNC on my NT and SuSE Linux boxes. Works great for me!

VNC works great with Windows & Linux clients, and Linux servers (Windows servers are limited to a single desktop at this time I believe). You need to install a VNC client, but I consider it the best alternative.

• details here
• screenshots cose we love 'em.

I find that it's interface, especially remote, is far better than Windows, BSD, Solaris, and other UNIX systems.
Uh ok Tridia VNC has a port for AIX and Solaris as well as Linux. SSH is the same on any Unix. FreeBSD's package collection has a vncserver in its ports collextion. You can install BASH on BSD or Solaris. What exactly does Linux offer that any other modern Unix doesn't in terms of remote administration. Heck, you can even get openssh and Cygwin on a 2k boc for most of your administrative needs. Sure you may like RPMs better than the FreeBSD ports collection, although I don't really see why. However, Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD all provide easy means of allowing you to VNC in and use your windows manager of choice or ssh in and use your prompt of choice.Finally, unlike linux, bourne scripts are run through a proper borune shell and not a bloated bash shell.

Don't forget to take a look at TridiaVNC. They seem to update the code more often.
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BTW I think that Win4Lin is making a remote Windows app server which might be based on VNC.

VNC is like magic, man. That's where it's at. :)

===

I am developing TightVNC software which features a number of efficient bandwidth optimizations for well-known VNC software suite, and I'd like to share my opinion and experience on low-bandwidth remote desktop solutions. I think TightVNC and future versions of TridiaVNC may be a better alternatives as compared to X in all its flavours (with LBX, DXPC etc.) and I'll try to explain why in the text below. In short, I don't feel much pain using TightVNC over 33.6 Kbps dial-up connection.

Speaking of X and TightVNC, each choice has its specific benefits and drawbacks. First, let's look at strong sides of TightVNC (many points are applicable to the standard VNC, except for the bandwidth usage):

1. TightVNC requires minimum amount of code at the client (user's) side. The client does not require installation and it's size is about 200..300 KBytes. Moreover, you can access any remote system when no native client available: your remote desktop may be accessed from any Java-enabled Web browser, just type the hostname and port number of TightVNC's internal httpd.
2. TightVNC is truly multi-platform in its design and complexity level. Developing a new client is very simple task, the protocol is very simple. There are clients for X and Win32 environments and platform-neutral Java client (only 30 KB of compressed byte code!).
3. TightVNC is better suited for operation in network environment in general. For example, it just skips screen areas that are obsoleted at the moment when a client asks for screen update.
4. TightVNC does not deal with fonts on the client side: therefore it does not depend on font sets on the client system and does not require configuring font servers etc.
5. Compression level in Tight encoder is configurable on the client side and there is a possibility to enable lossy JPEG compression with adjustable image quality. If you don't care about every pixel appearence but just want to get work done, JPEG compression with low image quality level will efficiently use limited bandwidth even on most complex desktop contents.

From my real-life experience, TightVNC session is usually more bandwidth-friendly as compared to X with SSH compression, but X and VNC are very different in their architectures, and there are situations where X is more efficient. And it's not always simple to compare X and VNC.

The main problem of X is its complexity. X was intended to be too flexible and universal by design, but this also means that underlying techniques and protocols are extremely complicated. I often imagine X died under the pressing of it's own complexity. Now about weakness points of the TightVNC:

1. TightVNC always exports the whole screen when X deals with separate windows.
2. VNC was not designed to be secure. There is a number of serious security flaws. X is not perfect in this sense, too, but it's a bit better.
3. Most impressive TightVNC features (local cursor support, JPEG compression, Tight Encoder 1.2) are still in the development phase. While Unix code and Java viewer are ready, Win32 version is not -- there are known bugs at this moment (to be solved in a week).
4. There are problems with internationalization in TightVNC.

Maybe I've forgotten to say something above, but now it's too late and I have to go now.

--
With Best Wishes,
Constantin

I can't urge it enough. My boss wanted to study some of his Oracle stuff, but the files and db were on one of the computer lab machines... so he asked me to set up WinVNC on it and give him the IP/display#/password. I suggested to him TridiaVNC (www.tridiavnc.com) since the latest release supports Tight encoding, so I gave him the Tridia vncviewer.exe binary and set it up on the Oracle machine. He said it was so good compared to hextile encoding that it felt almost as good as running it locally. He was on a modem, while the college is on a T1. I tried it myself from home and I must say, I was impressed. Sure, the Start menu doesn't pop up instantaneously, but it doesn't take more than 2 seconds to pop up. Considering how I'm used to running telnet over my modem line, I could tolerate it well enough. I also tried a Tight VNC session to my home computer; I was able to play Xtris well enough without trouble, minus maybe tuning the speed down a notch or two to make it more comfortable. The school-to-home session was 8-bit 640x480, the home-to-Oracle-machine session was 800x600x32bpp