Most efficent remote computing software

The software I've used so far is really horrible and laggy.

Does anyone have a recommendation for software to access computers remotely that doesn't have much lag.

A little more information would be helpful. For example, where are you connecting from an to? What type of internet connection to you have at both ends of the connection, are you going through a firewall, going over a VPN, etc?

pparks1 said:

A little more information would be helpful. For example, where are you connecting from an to? What type of internet connection to you have at both ends of the connection, are you going through a firewall, going over a VPN, etc?

These questions are important, because they impact the quality of your connection, and also will help us to recommend the right tool for you. Do you want a free one, or are you willing to pay. I logmein. But my fav is gotoassist.

I'm willing to pay.
My connection is via teksavvy. Which offers a 5 M DSL connection.
I'm connecting to my house in Ontario from Montreal.
The home in Ontario has Rogers Cable Internet (Which is a 10 M connection, though it seems to be very slow when running on older computers)

I use Norton Firewill on my computer in montreal.
There is no firewall on the computer in ontario that I want to connect to. But I plan to eventually put one up.

if you're really ok with paying, then one of the top contenders would probably be Symantec pcAnywhere : Remote Computer Access - PC Remote Control | Symantec pcAnywhere 12.5 (version 12.5 has been reported to work on windows 7).

On the freeware side, I was about to recommend jrdesktop : jrdesktop - Java Remote Desktop, but I tested and even on a local network, there was a big lag from windows 7 to linux and vice and versa. That's sad, seemed like a nice tool.

Hi there

One of the problems with ANY remote software is that the bottleneck - particularly from a HOME computer that you are acessing remotely is usually the UPLOAD speed.

Most ISP's make big noises in their commercials about "How FAST" their Internet connection is - but that's only 1/2 the truth (or maybe lower than 40%).

Most ADSL (aka Broadband) lines are just that ASSYMETRIC. I.E different connection speeds in each direction.


You can get pretty good download speeds but uploads are usually atrocious -- like as slow as 330 / 440 kbs even if your download speed is reasonably fast like 3 or 4 Mb/s -- torrent users might have noticed when trying to SEED apps that the SEED speed is pretty horrible compared with download.

A futher(usually unadvertised) problem is "Contention". The "advertised" speeds are usually the maximum. If there are a lot of users on the connection to the ISP server near where you live then the speeds will degrade -- especially as there is this huge demand now for "Video streaming" all over the place -- until the whole infrastructure is updated don't expect any great improvements -- and unfortunately the costs will go up too.

Even if the remote software compresses the terminal data a typical windows session will need to send a lot of data per screen even if you try and limit the remote sending to 15 bit colour only.

If you can get a FAST upload link then pretty well any piece of decent remote software - RDP / VPN / Tightvnc etc will perform fine.

Even if you are connecting from one LAN to another LAN in different commercial workplaces (not uncommon if you are connecting to a remote clients computer) 10 Gb/s on the whole line for ALL the computers is still quite common so your response from the remote computer won't be lightning fast either especially if for part of the connection between the two lans the "public Internet" has to be used.

Cheers
jimbo