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Which VNC Software Is Best?
Futurepower(R) writes "Which VNC software do you think is best, and why? There are several free programs, for example, TightVNC, RealVNC, UltraVNC, and TridiaVNC. Or, is it better to pay for VNC software, like Tridia VNC Pro or Radmin? Which is fastest, most secure, and the least hassle? Which has video resolution scaling of the remote desktop?"
UltraVNC because their website has a picture of a girl.
vino's included in gnome 2.6 and uses the new xorg extensions making it very very fast
For Mac OS X, there are several options; what I believe to be the best options are below.
On the server end of things, there's OSXvnc, a nice free VNC server for Mac OS X. (There's even an OS9vnc, on the same page.)
The best free client for Mac OS X, in my opinion, is Chicken of the VNC.
At the commercial end of the spectrum is Apple Remote Desktop 2.1. Apple Remote Desktop is much more than just a remote control solution; it provides desktop and systems management tools, software distribution tools, mass screen sharing, scripted actions, and all sorts of other features. But as of version 2, the remote screen protocol is based on VNC. With one checkbox, any VNC client can connect to any machine running Apple's VNC server software (which it confusingly calls "Remote Desktop Client"), and Apple's client software (which it calls "Remote Desktop Admin") can connect to ordinary VNC servers on any platform. Apple Remote Desktop does automatic resolution scaling, full screen, etc., and as of 2.1, even supports multiple monitors - even when using free VNC clients to connect! The VNC server piece (the one Apple calls "Client") is free, but there's a catch: at least one copy Remote Desktop Admin is required to be "legal", but then Remote Desktop Client can be installed on an unlimited number of machines in your organization.
I wouldn't use any of em; can't trust the VNC. Lousy Vemocrats!!!
Yea, me too. It's not fantastic, being VNC after all. But it works pretty well, good video quality over a slower connection too. TightVNS is stable too.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
If we're talking Unix(ish) systems then the fastest and most functional on fast connections (like ethernet) is actually "none of the above". A normal X11 session is much more smooth and responsive than any VNC. Endless scaling, etc...
And Terminal Services on Windows is much better than VNC (there are Unix clients).
Over slow connections VNC is better. I just use whichever works. I've found that RealVNC locks up/crashes Windows less often than the others.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
actually ... tightvnc 1.3.x supports a video driver.
additionally, enhancements have been made to
the polling algorithm which have greatly improved
performance and cpu usage.
1.3.x is labelled a development version,
but it's very stable. check it out.
The first question is which VNC programs are GPL. This is the most important factor in finding the best VNC out there.
I have used a number remote control software packages (ranging from PCAnywhere to TightVNC), and in my experience, RAdmin provided the absolute lowest possible overhead on the wire - with PCAW 10 (the last version I used) and others, the best way to get the best performance is to cut the resolution down and cut the colour depth down.
With RAdmin, neither of these was necessary. I threw a sniffer on the wire to see what the traffic was like, and it was extremely small.
It also worked under Wine reasonably well (I don't know if they make a native Linux version now, they didn't when I played with it a couple of years ago). The amount of traffic with a 1600x1200x24 resolution on the remote desktop was small enough to be used over a dialup with reasonably good performance.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Uh... yeah, Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?
UltraVNC crashes on Windows machine with an ATI All-In-Wonder Video Card. It also has problems on machines with multiple monitors.
THus it's the only one that doesn't need to poll the hell out of your computer ... Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Narf, I think so Brain, but where are we going to get enough punchcard ballot machines for all the voters in Florida by midnight November 1st?
RealVNC: the original.
TightVNC: optimized for low-bandwidth
Ultra: tons of extras - file transfer, chat, video driver, NT/AD security
Tridia: get around firewalls, more management features
I miss anything?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Remote desktop is not the same beast as VNC. VNC and derivatives are based on getting bits and pieces of your desktop video image that change, then compressing them (or not), and sending them to the other end. Once on the other end, they are decompressed (or not) and blitted to a video buffer to build up an image. That's it. That is all VNC does. It gives you an image of what is going on on the remote end.
Remote desktop however is a bit different. It doesn't give you just an image of what is occuring on the other end. Remote desktop is a stripped down single user terminal server. When you connect to an XP or 2000 machine using RD, then the remote XP machine redirects all local console functions of that machine to your client. This has the effect of knocking out whoever is sitting at the local console of the machine you are RD'ing into. In effect, all video operations are redirected to an off-screen video buffer, then compressed, and sent on their way using the remote desktop protocol. The sucky thing about this is that remote desktop only allows one and only one console session to exist.
Remote desktop also encrypts the entire session using 128 bit encryption. It even allows you to redirect your local disks and printers to the remote machine for use. You can use this feature for a sort'of poor mans VPN. All the data moved through the redirected drives will be encrypted and moved over the RDP port.
Remote desktop is faster than VNC because Microsoft is able to perform tricks in kernel space. For example, if you fire up windows media player to view a video file, then that data doesn't have to be rendered at all on the remote machine. Microsoft simply streams it to your client machine using RDP. The same thing however won't work with Apple QuickTime or RealPlayer. I'm also not entirely sure whether the windows are even drawn to video first. Microsoft may be pulling some redirection of GDI commands so that RD acts somewhat like X in that respect.
Our site uses VNC for user desktop support since the video is shared with the user. We use remote desktop for server management. Remote desktops feature for helping the user is problematic at best becuase they have to invite you to join first. It whole invitation thing is simply cumbersome. That's why it is just simpler to use VNC.
So, there are positives and negatives to using VNC or RD.
+1
If you're using all XP or 2000, why not use Remote Desktop? There's a really good linux client as well if that's the reason you were using VNC.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
If you're using VNC, you probably notice how slow it is. UltraVNC/TightVNC is a big improvement over regular VNC, as well as XWindows, but they're all dog slow.
NX (by NoMachine) and FreeNX (the GPL'ed edition) are REALLY fast, on the other hand. They are 100% encrypted through SSH and can tunnel to VNC, X, and RDP....
NX will currently only host from Unix/Linux. However, there are a bunch of clients.
I made an IMMEDIATE change to FreeNX/NX after using it only once. Now, I no longer use VNC for Linux....
Because some of us have XP Home which does not have the Remote Desktop feature
Wrong!! Citrix Metaframe does not run on RDP. Citrix still uses their superfast and lean ICA protocol. Here's the real scoop (BTW, I was a WinFrame 2.0 beta tester)
Once there was OS/2... a company named citrix came along an created a multi-user version with a remote protocol much faster and leaner than X... and it was good... ran great over 9600 baud modems.
Then Windows came out and destroyed OS/2. Citrix licensed the entire Windows 3.51 code base and overhauled the kernel with new multi-user windows feature, thereafter called multi-win. They mated multi-win to their ICA protocol for presentation. You purchased "Winframe" from them, it was their build and you had to get service packs etc.. from them.. but it was rock solid, super fast and worked. You paid for the server, then a per concurrent user license fee. So you only paid for the max number of concurrent users.
Then the thin-client rage hit, spurred largely by the success of Citrix. Citrix had secured the source code to Windows NT 4.0, ported multiwin and their ICA hooks to it, christened it Winframe 2.0 and had it ready to go when Microsoft pulled the plug. Microsoft made a big splash with their "Hydra" project that they were going to come out with their own citrix killer. In reality it was a small team of program managers gathering requirements. the whole thing was created to steal multi-win and ICA before the thin-client rage destroyed them(as was the thinking back then)
So the 8,000 lb gorilla at the last moment, Citrix 2.0 was DONE for months, refused to agree to the licensing terms for NT4.0 effectively derailing Citrix. Citrix was smart though.. they didn't blink, instead they went into overdrive negotiation mode and eventually hammered out an agreement where they licensed multi-win to Microsoft for a small amount of cash, kept ICA to themselves and got Microsoft to sign a 3 year no compete for non-windows platforms. The multiwin technology was then baked into Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server (and if you actually have a copy around and view the details on the core kernel DLLs, they still say citrix BTW) and they took their netmeeting protocol h.323 and created RDP. RDP clients were only available for windows as per the citrix agreement. Citrix then built Metaframe as an add-on to the multi-win kernel extensions and brought their superior management tools and protocols to the platform.
The killer is that microsoft then demanded a per seat license of NT 4.0 Professional for each user, whether they were running Citrix or not. In the end, anyone deploying thin-clients uses Citrix so Microsoft succeeded in essentially foisting a huge tax on the thin-client market thwarting any inroads in might have had as a major desktop replacement. You have to buy Windows, pay Citrix, pay for seats (or TCALS, slightly less expensive per seats licenses if you arent running XP now) and ICA licenses which are still connection based. This relegated Citrix to a very important, but niche player which made them happy, and protected Microsoft's desktop monopoly.
Citrix has gone on to extend their technology with clustering and other very powerful tools, including securing the protocol very nicely. RDP has been better optimized and runs fairly well, although ICA still runs circles around it. Microsoft then added a remote admin mode to W2k, XP and W2k3 using the now venerable multi-win extensions that are now part of the core kernel code.
And now, as Paul Harvey says, you know the rest of the story.