RDP Bandwidth Requirements

[cdrake135]

Hello All,

Does anyone have some general RDP bandwidth sizing requirements? I am trying to determine how much WAN network bandwith is required for 10, 20, 50, 100 concurrent users. I realize that the application, (i.e. graphics activity) makes a difference. I am hoping that someone out there has done some load testing/sizing with general users, (ex. MS Office) and power users, (graphics programs) and came up with some numbers.

Thanks,

Chris

[oreeh]

56-64kbit is a commonly used value in these calculations.

With graphics intense apps I'd calculate (just to be on the safe side) with 128-256kbit.

[davlloyd]

With multiple screens, high colour and all experience settings enabled and then run some video with both video and audio it can get up to 1Mb+. Better off profiling what functionlaity you need and tuining your settings down to the needs.

Latency is the mroe pressing concern then bandwidth for usability, and watch out for those print jobs

[cdrake135]

So it sounds like light users require approx 65kbits/sec of bandwidth and power users can go past 1Mbits/sec with streaming video. Bottom line, your miliage may vary....test your environment to make sure.

Chris

[TomHowarth]

As DavLloyd says Test In my opinion your printing will be the biggest bandwidth hog not RDP, investigate Uniprint Desktop edition http://www.uniprint.net/products_UniPrintDesktop.asp as a posible solution to kull print stream size as well.

[tbrouwer]

How are you guys testing this?

I was thinking of putting a machine between the terminal and the ESX Server and just running ethereal or something to monitor bandwidth... any easier suggestions ?

[oreeh]

Limit the traffic on the switch between the client and the server.

[davlloyd]

We have network traceas placed on the devices but as a first call a soft solution is good enough. Something like Packaet Analyzer from Colasoft will allow you to run it up on a VM and will breakdown the statistics by port

[FrankSabatelli]

We run two desktop farms and it all depends on your image. We have 8 different images and each has a differing RDP requirement. Just remember, anything with high screen refreshes, streaming media, aplets, or scolling bars will dramatically increase your RDP traffic. Our average RDP traffic is about 400 bytes over 53 ms round trips.