VNC, VPN, and All That Jazz

[Michael Hipp]

Richard Ebling wrote:

>   Besides the native X-Window protocol, NX is able to translate and
>   tunnel industry standard protocols like the RDP Protocol, used by
>   Microsoft and Citrix, and the VNC protocol, used by a number of freely
>   available tools, into X-Window, giving secure and fast access to the
>   complete set of network computing facilities available inside a
>   corporate network
> 
>     I recall reading about 6 months ago that the NX client-server 
> combination beats the pants off VNC, on similar (identical?) 
> applications.  To the extent that NX was considered to be even tolerable 
> over a 56kbps (or slower) dialup connection, as opposed to VNC's 
> reputation for being painfully slow over such a connection.

I tried once an online demo of NX and came away thinking it works well but 
could see no particular advantage over VNC. Performance seemed about the same 
but I was on broadband on both ends. Think I'll make a note to retry it when 
on dialup. The 24.6 dial-up I get here at home is a good test for anything.

But for NX to be really useful they'd need a Winders host version. Right now 
the server only runs on *nix. That's what I like about VNC is it's as platform 
agnostic as anything can be.

Michael