Remote Desktop Connection data usage

[Chris S]

I work on a support helpdesk and am currently working from home using a laptop with a mobile broadband connection. This has a data limit.

I sometimes have to browse the web to answer questions. Would I use less of my data allowance doing it on my laptop or through the RDC to my PC at work?

Also, what about Skype text messages? I can access it locally or through an RDC to my PC at work.

 

[jefmcg]

Almost certainly RDC will use much more data. When you do a google search, it has to send the words of your query to google. What you get back is just text, with an image or two. RDC has to send pack enough data to draw the entire screen, every pixel including white space. Even with compression, this is going to be much more data than a webpage.

Skype may be closer, but I would suspect it would still be better using skype on your machine. Also when sending sound or images, I would assume that RDC would use a compression that loses some of the data, so the quality might be noticeably worse through RDC compared with Skype directly (which presumably also uses a lossy compression, so already isn't as good as standing in the room with someone)

But turn on data usage monitoring and see for yourself.

 

[mybike]

If you don't have an ad blocker, I'd recommend you get one. The ads may use more bandwidth than to rest of the page put together.

 

[mjr]

Almost certainly best would be to a compressed encrypted VPN to your work, using RDC only when you can't do a task in some other way. Also, consider switching off scripts and images in your browser as much as possible to minimise data transfer sizes - there are plugins for some browsers to enable them selectively for sites which use them sensibly or don't work without them.

 

[Chris S]

I decided to do a quick test - I looked at the same 3 ebay pages on my laptop and on my PC at work. They used about 1Mb on my laptop and about 12Mb via an RDC. The laptop was a lot quicker as well. There will be other factors that I don't know about but accessing the web directly from my laptop does seem to use only a fraction of the data.

 

[Chris S]

I decided to do a quick test - I looked at the same 3 ebay pages on my laptop and on my PC at work. They used about 1Mb on my laptop and 12Mb via an RDC. The laptop was a lot quicker as well. There will be other factors that I don't know about but accessing the web directly from my laptop does seem to use only a fraction of the data.

 

[mybike]

And repeating all your posts on CC will use a lot more bandwidth. (Sorry, I know it's playing up, did it to me earlier)