Remote Desktop/ Vpn International Performance

[tcmill]

All

I am planning (hoping) to be able to remote desktop(logmein,vnc) or VPN from thailand back to New Zealand in the near future.

The idea is to work 3 or 4 hours a day in the mornings linking to my desktop at my office in New Zealand

1. Is it feasible or am I dreaming - would the latency make it unworkable

2. WHich telco would you recommend - CAT/maxnet ....

3. Is better performance in Bangkok/Pattaya or in the bush.Saw some comments from those up country who said speeds were better

Testing from New Zealand from work to the BKK server on speedtest.net I get around 1000 kb/s down and 120 up

Many thanks for any feedback

Tony

[nikster]

It's very slow on a standard TOT line (nominally 2MB/s). The VPN is fast, I don't know exactly what makes RDC pretty slow. I suspect latency + protocol inefficiency. I use it from time to time to modify settings on servers in San Francisco - it's OK if I go in for 5 minutes, change something, and go back out. But I would not want to actually have to work on one of those machines. Mostly using standard windows terminal services - Remote Desktop Connection. I was using one of those sharing websites once, it wasn't a lot faster. Certainly not good enough to work comfortably.

What's also DEAD slow is mounting windows shares. It's 10 times slower than the connection would allow - no idea why here either. It has to do with Windows explorer though. When I did this, I would immediately switch to the command line, and work from there - and the remote share speed would be OK. Downloading would be reasonable, whereas in Explorer, it would just time out.

For some reason, ssh works way better too (our Linux machines at work). So I much prefer that for remote work.

The advantage you have in BKK is that you have much more choice for provider. Pattaya would work fine too as would Chiang Mai, Phuket (Thailand's "farang internet hub). Out in the boonies, you may only get TOT, and chances are that it sucks badly.

Your man problem will be latency, not bandwidth - so check the ping from your work machine to Bangkok. Higher end connection have the exact same ping as lower end connections so I don't think you'd gain much with a business line. I would get a 4MB line for sure though, not cheap but worth it.

If you can set it up so you can work locally, and can ssh into the work machine to do whatever you do. That's fast and stable. Why do you need to access your work PC remotely?

[Crushdepth]

It depends what kind of work you want to do. The latency will drive you mad if you try to work directly off your Thai desktop remotely (its a bit frustrating even *within* Thailand). However, it is ok to retrieve the odd file, read email etc.

I suggest you take a look at something like Microsoft Groove (in the new office) as a way to share/synchronise files between the two machines so you can work locally. This works well in combination with Hamachi - if you need something you log in remotely, dump the required files into Groove and log out. The files will automatically sync to your NZ machine in the background so you can work on them locally, and any changes you make will be background synced back.

[tcmill]

It's very slow on a standard TOT line (nominally 2MB/s). The VPN is fast, I don't know exactly what makes RDC pretty slow. I suspect latency + protocol inefficiency. I use it from time to time to modify settings on servers in San Francisco - it's OK if I go in for 5 minutes, change something, and go back out. But I would not want to actually have to work on one of those machines. Mostly using standard windows terminal services - Remote Desktop Connection. I was using one of those sharing websites once, it wasn't a lot faster. Certainly not good enough to work comfortably.

What's also DEAD slow is mounting windows shares. It's 10 times slower than the connection would allow - no idea why here either. It has to do with Windows explorer though. When I did this, I would immediately switch to the command line, and work from there - and the remote share speed would be OK. Downloading would be reasonable, whereas in Explorer, it would just time out.

For some reason, ssh works way better too (our Linux machines at work). So I much prefer that for remote work.

The advantage you have in BKK is that you have much more choice for provider. Pattaya would work fine too as would Chiang Mai, Phuket (Thailand's "farang internet hub). Out in the boonies, you may only get TOT, and chances are that it sucks badly.

Your man problem will be latency, not bandwidth - so check the ping from your work machine to Bangkok. Higher end connection have the exact same ping as lower end connections so I don't think you'd gain much with a business line. I would get a 4MB line for sure though, not cheap but worth it.

If you can set it up so you can work locally, and can ssh into the work machine to do whatever you do. That's fast and stable. Why do you need to access your work PC remotely?

I need access into the databases & do support work on the front end access apps that ODBC into the oracle back end tables.Downloading the 50G database tables each day aint probably an option - perhaps part of it .I also need access into various systems at the office

The ping is about 320 ms to BKK -hmmmm!

I assume with VPN I have the apps installed on the machine in thailand and it thinks it is part of the LAN at work.You said it is fast but I wonder about returning recordsets over the wire and the bandwidth

ssh commands lines seem beyond me

Many thanks for your detailed response

[youngkiwi]

I have been running remote desktop between Bangkok and our Auckland office for many years now. I usually get good performance from True and excellent performance from KSC. If you are looking for reliability and speed, KSC Internet will be your best provider.

[nikster]

I need access into the databases & do support work on the front end access apps that ODBC into the oracle back end tables.Downloading the 50G database tables each day aint probably an option - perhaps part of it .I also need access into various systems at the office

Sounds like you can just use your apps over the VPN. As you said, as soon as your machine is on the VPN it's like it's standing in the office - assuming that it's all correctly configured. Whatever you can do in the office, you can do over the machine on the VPN.

What you are doing sounds like what I am doing, accessing the DBs over the VPN is just like you were sitting in the office and absolutely no problem. Same with all the other apps.

Here is what I do - as long as the data transfer is small, I just use stuff via the VPN - as if sitting in the office. If I have to move some large file from one server to another back home, I log into the office with RDC, and do it there. Then the large data transfer happens inside the office and is pretty fast (because it doesn't have to go over the wire all the way to Thailand and back).

Before you go to Thailand, set all this up and then try working from home - VPN into the office from your home DSL. If it works from home, it will work the same from Thailand, just a little bit slower.

Issuing SQL commands over a slow connection is fast, as is returning records, assuming your result set is not huge.

Edited June 16, 2008 by nikster

[tcmill]

Thanks for all your help guys.I spent hours trying get this info before coming to this site

I will trial the VPN at home as suggested

And thanks for the remote feedback YoungKiwi ,so maybe the pipe to NZ aint too bad with a good ISP

I 'm feeling a bit more optimistic about pulling it off now - tho I can still hear the laughter coming from the long suffering thai internet users

Now if I can just re-educate the boss to correct the strange association he has of Thailand

with hookers and Austrians - I'll be on the plane

[Guest Reimar]

I using RAdmin for many years already. OK it isn't Freeware and cost US$ 49 per server license while client is free. But it's the only one which is secure enough for me for to use to remote connect to customers systems with tobe worry about security.

And the prog has different features like complete control, view only, send Message and more.

May you take a look at their website: http://www.radmin.com

Cheers.

[sjaak327]

RDC is secure as well, especialy when used with NLA. Of course VPN (providing you use certificates instead of passwords) is very secure as well, SSTP is a new technology available with Server 2008, which will build the PPTP connection over https (443) instead of 1726, which is an advantage if you use closed networks (as I don't think there are networks where they block 443 outbound, the standard PPTP port is often blocked on such networks.

But besides the speed, security should be your main worry, I would not consider using RDC, VNC or Radmin wihtout a secure VPN tunnel.

As nikster already pointed out, Smb (windows files sharing) isn't built for WAN, it's a typical LAN protocol, so mounting drivers using SMB will be slow. It might indeed be a little bit quicker when using a dos prompt,and use net use but it's still not cutting it. If you use a VPN, consider using FTP for the odd file transfer, as it will be faster then smb.

[nikster]

As nikster already pointed out, Smb (windows files sharing) isn't built for WAN, it's a typical LAN protocol, so mounting drivers using SMB will be slow. It might indeed be a little bit quicker when using a dos prompt,and use net use but it's still not cutting it. If you use a VPN, consider using FTP for the odd file transfer, as it will be faster then smb.

Yeah FTP is a good tip for large file transfers. Not only because its made for remote access, also because you can then use a download manager or something like that to get a huge speed increase as it gets around your Thai ISPs bandwidth throttling.

I would ssh into the work iMac, mount the windows share, copy over the files to the iMac, then use FTP in the iMac to get stuff to Thailand with Flashget/Download Manager. Maxed out my line at the full 2Mbits over the VPN. Normal file transfer would be a fraction of this.

Of course you could install an FTP server on any Windows machine as well but with our production servers we were not allowed to install anything (understandably) and Mac has an ftp server built-in so enabling that took 3 seconds.

For small stuff I used to use the command prompt and "copy /z" on windows. /z enables network mode and has two advantages: One, it shows progress. Two, it can actually continue after an interrupt. e.g. when the connection gets interrupted, just type it again and it will continue copying instead of copying the whole file all over again.

I can only recommend getting a real unix system and learning command line stuff, it's just so much more efficient for a lot of things. Cygwin on Windows is a kinda-sorta replacement but has all sorts of problems.