[Bloat] DSLReports Speed Test doesn't like Remote Desktop

Michael Richardson mcr at sandelman.ca
Sat Aug 28 15:36:25 EDT 2021


RDP (specifically with Windows as the desktop) is integrated into the display
pipeline such that it effectively never loses frames.  The results of an
(e.g.) Excel redraw over a slow link can be spectactically stupid with every
cell being drawn each time it is "re"-computed.  The result is that the
application itself is blocked when the RDP frames are being generated.

I/we observed this a decade ago when building virtual desktop infrastructure.
There was a Linux Xrdp server (via a bunch of patches that didn't survive)
that was more screen-scraper.  VNC has always screen scraped the pixels, so it
"naturally" skips the intermediate frames when the application draws faster
than then remote desktop protocol can keep up.

I thought that there were patches to RDP to make this better, but I never
confirmed this.



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