Client software over a VPN - VNC, Terminal Services?

[dellboy]

I have set up a client to Lan VPN for the office and am currently using VNC as a connectivity tool. The users create a VPN tunnel to the firewall and then run VNC to connect to their desktops. This solution works well because the user can see the desktop in the office (which they are used to seeing) and everything works reasonably well. The only problem is speed as VNC (while excellent) is quite slow, especially over a 56k modem from abroad.

Does anyone have any suggestions of a decent solution that works and it quite quick. I know that whatever is used will be slow as its a 56k dial up to the web, but any suggestions!!

Cheers

 

[gconnect]

well you hit the nail on the head with the fact about a 56K dailup link

it's mainly because of all of the overhead maintaining the gui
vnc is very combersome over dialup, although MSTermServ is not all that bad (for servers)

although i do not think it will be a tremendous performance boost, there is always PCanywhere

 

[eeserge811]

Buy default vncviewer use 16 bit pixel format try switch it to 8 bit this will give you speed up.

 

[lgarner]

NetOp is relatively quick.

 

[1911man]

I second Netop. I came from a place where we used VNC, Pcanywhere and it is better. Nothing is that great over 56k, but we have had pretty good success with netop and I know before I got here and it was implemented there was a lot of other tested.

 

[flick30]

try tightvnc.com for a slightly more optimised vnc.. you lose a bit of quality in the image though.

If you're lucky enough to be running XP on the workstations
then remote desktop is very usable over 56k, and is also free.

 

[c1utch]

Why don't you use netmeeting. The user can't connect to his/her work pc without autenticating to the Active Directory, or if you aren't running AD, they will still have to authenticate to the work PC before connecting. You can setup Netmeeting to automatically accept calls and share the desktop, just like VNC. I've used both, VNC and Netmeeting and have found that occasionally VNC can hang up and not accept a connection, however this was on Win 95 boxes so I'm not sure if the OS was the problem or not. Switched to Netmeeting about a year and a half ago and have loved it. WinXP doesn't offer Netmeeting in the start menu, as Win2k and Win9x does...but it's still there. You to run conf.exe from a command prompt or a run dialog box to fire it up. We've run some rough tests to see if Netmeeting was faster than VNC and it seemed to be slightly faster, but you can at least test it out over your 56k connection. Its just nice not to have to worry about installing the VNC client on new machines and worrying about the VNC password.

Chris