Hello!
I'm sure at first you'll think this should be on a different forum - probably the "running windows on mac" forum, but stick with it, it's really a mac systems question in the end.
I do a lot of work my connecting to windows servers through RDP. My employer purchased a MacBook Air (running 10.7.2 lion) for me - very nice! I've really enjoyed the mac experience. The shell is great, the gesture pad is wonderful. Combined with the multi-desktop structure, and the never-ending battery life (since its all solid state), it is a great improvement in productivity.
Nevertheless, RDP performance has been downright horrible. By "horrible" I mean mainly keyboard latency. There is latency between typing the key and seeing it show in the RDP session. I tried RDC. I tried CoRD. All are very latent. I tried connecting to WIndows 2003 Server, and Windows 2008 server - no difference. I am connecting from work, with a huge pipe - the bandwidth is off the meter if I go to any of the speed test sites.
I finally gave up on any mac client (looks it is not supported for lion according to MS site) and installed Windows 7 on a virtual (VMWare Fusion). The virtual runs very well! EXCEPT - when I run RDP. Just before I shot myself in the face, I tried one more thing that cleared up the keyboard latency in a special case.
I have one network I connect to through a SonicWall VPN client. I installed this client on the Windows 7 virtual. If I run the VPN client, connect to the remote server through the VPN client, the keyboard latency vanishes - completely! It becomes lightning fast. Since I connect to only this particular network through SonicWall, I am desperate to find out why this particular configuration would help RDP so much. I do most of my work without connecting through this VPN (raw RDP to Windows servers).
Question: the virtual is using the mac host for network connectivity, and usually going through a VPN causes network performance to decrease... yet in this case, there is a vast improvement when it comes to RDP. Does anyone have a theory as to what SonicWall does to push these RDP packets through? Could it change some of the mac os network settings specifically for the virtual network adapter? If so, what do you think those might be?
I have tried (system variables):
net.inet.tcp.rfc1323 = 0 (turning this off, default is on 1 )
net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack = 0 (default is 3)
As well as various recv and send buffer settings
Remember, this is a Windows RDP client running on a windows virtual Windows 7 x64. SonicWall = on, awesome performance. Normal RDP = bad keyboard latency. It seems that it would have to be something in the mac network settings.
Thanks!
I'm sure at first you'll think this should be on a different forum - probably the "running windows on mac" forum, but stick with it, it's really a mac systems question in the end.
I do a lot of work my connecting to windows servers through RDP. My employer purchased a MacBook Air (running 10.7.2 lion) for me - very nice! I've really enjoyed the mac experience. The shell is great, the gesture pad is wonderful. Combined with the multi-desktop structure, and the never-ending battery life (since its all solid state), it is a great improvement in productivity.
Nevertheless, RDP performance has been downright horrible. By "horrible" I mean mainly keyboard latency. There is latency between typing the key and seeing it show in the RDP session. I tried RDC. I tried CoRD. All are very latent. I tried connecting to WIndows 2003 Server, and Windows 2008 server - no difference. I am connecting from work, with a huge pipe - the bandwidth is off the meter if I go to any of the speed test sites.
I finally gave up on any mac client (looks it is not supported for lion according to MS site) and installed Windows 7 on a virtual (VMWare Fusion). The virtual runs very well! EXCEPT - when I run RDP. Just before I shot myself in the face, I tried one more thing that cleared up the keyboard latency in a special case.
I have one network I connect to through a SonicWall VPN client. I installed this client on the Windows 7 virtual. If I run the VPN client, connect to the remote server through the VPN client, the keyboard latency vanishes - completely! It becomes lightning fast. Since I connect to only this particular network through SonicWall, I am desperate to find out why this particular configuration would help RDP so much. I do most of my work without connecting through this VPN (raw RDP to Windows servers).
Question: the virtual is using the mac host for network connectivity, and usually going through a VPN causes network performance to decrease... yet in this case, there is a vast improvement when it comes to RDP. Does anyone have a theory as to what SonicWall does to push these RDP packets through? Could it change some of the mac os network settings specifically for the virtual network adapter? If so, what do you think those might be?
I have tried (system variables):
net.inet.tcp.rfc1323 = 0 (turning this off, default is on 1 )
net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack = 0 (default is 3)
As well as various recv and send buffer settings
Remember, this is a Windows RDP client running on a windows virtual Windows 7 x64. SonicWall = on, awesome performance. Normal RDP = bad keyboard latency. It seems that it would have to be something in the mac network settings.
Thanks!