Tuning Windows XP Remote Desktop for Network Bandwidth
Published: August 27, 2001
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We're back from a quick trip to southern Oregon—the weather was hot, the job offer wasn't, the wineries interesting, and the telecommunications facilities minimal. But with Windows XP Professional installed on my laptop, I was able to run a Windows Remote Desktop session to my workstation in the office, even with a really horrible hotel dial-up connection. Admittedly, the overall experience connecting with a 19.2 kbps connection was less than optimal, but with Windows XP, I was able to get work done even at that speed. With a better connection at a second hotel, the overall experience was quite workable.
Getting Ready for the Remote Experience
Remote Desktop Connection in Windows XP uses version 5.1 of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to remotely connect to a Windows–based computer running Terminal Services. This can be a Windows XP Professional workstation or a Windows Server 2003. Or, with somewhat less functionality, it will connect to any computer running Windows Terminal Services, but you'll be limited to the feature set supported by the older version of RDP.
Before leaving the work computer you want to connect to remotely, make sure you've set it up to use Remote Desktop. Open System Properties on your desktop computer, click the Remote tab, and enable Remote Desktop. Then lock your computer, but leave it turned on.
Tuning Remote Desktop for a Slow Connection
Using Remote Desktop Connection on my Windows XP–based laptop to connect to my workstation in the office (also running Windows XP Professional) gives me the full functionality of my work environment wherever I am. When I'm using virtual private networking technology over a high speed broadband connection or over a wireless 802.11b connection in my local Starbucks, I can use all the features of my remote desktop as if I were sitting at my desk. To make the most of a hotel dial-up connection, I can tune the features of Remote Desktop Connection to take better advantage of the limited bandwidth available.
To tune my Remote Desktop Connection, I did the following:
1. | Connected to the Internet and opened my VPN connection to the office. |
2. | On the Start menu, pointed to All Programs, pointed to Accessories, pointed to Communications, and then clicked Remote Desktop Connection. |
3. | Clicked Options. |
4. | Filled in the information to connect to my remote computer, and before I made the actual connection, clicked the Experience tab as shown below in Figure 1. 
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5. | The connection speed list lets me choose the connection speed and automatically selects the best options for the available bandwidth. For my slow connection in the hotel, I chose Modem (28.8 Mbps) to minimize the information being passed. |
6. | To further optimize the connection, I clicked the Local Resources tab, as shown in Figure 2, and turned off the computer sound and connection to local devices such as printers and disk drives. Although these are useful when I can afford the bandwidth, this was time for extreme measures. 
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7. | Then I clicked Connect and logged on to my work desktop. |
Although the speed wasn't great, I was able to read my e–mail effectively, including the one from Marketing that included a 2 MB PowerPoint presentation, and open the spreadsheet from Finance to approve the half dozen purchases that were waiting for my OK. Both of these would have been hopelessly slow if I'd had to download them to my laptop, but because I was actually running the workstation in my office, I didn't have to worry about that.
Using Offline Files When on the Road
After my daily check in to the office was taken care of, I closed the connection and opened the file that contains this column. Like all my work for the Expert Zone, this file resides on my home workstation, but I use Offline Files to make it transparently available when I'm on the road. Although I was disconnected from my home network, the document was still on my Z: drive. So I could open it, and finish writing about the dreadful connection in the hotel, and then save it.
After visiting some local wineries, I returned to the hotel, and the file was automatically synchronized when I logged on to the laptop and connected to my wireless home network. I finished the column, saved it, and e–mailed it off. All without ever making any changes to my normal work flow, even though I wasn't connected to the network most of the time I worked on it.
