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I haven been trying to understand the difference between VNC and RDP. My understanding is the VNC more or less just transmits a picture of the desktop. RDP however has more of a semantic understanding of what is happening on the desktop and transmits how to render certain types of windows, buttons, etc. (I don't know how relevant this is unless people are using Windows Presentation Foundation or something similar though...)

So it seems that RDP is a much more efficient protocol.

However, my primary use case will be for monitoring a desktop that has Chrome browser full screen. In this case, will RDP be doing the same thing as VNC would and transmitting the contents of the Chrome browser?

Alexis
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  • [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_remote_desktop_software) has an article comparing different remote desktop softwares. – Barmar Dec 24 '12 at 02:45

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I think you are mostly right that RDP handles vector graphics, while vnc is mainly screen image based.

Another difference is RDP informs clients when changes occur, while VNC server waits for clients to request the screen updates. This also makes RDP more efficient.

However, as users want more and more of the same experience as the remote computer, RDP nowadays seldom send vector graphics, i.e., RDP pretty much also send screen image diffs. The reason RDP is still faster is because Microsoft has built-in drivers inside Windows to detect display changes while VNC uses workaround to do that, you can imagine Microsoft does much better job in this. So even both protocols send the same image, Microsoft is much more efficient. As a matter of fact, no Windows remoting software is as efficient as RDP (I know Citrix's ICA, let's put it under same RDP category).

If you plan to remotely use Chrome for videos, you mway feel disappointed by RDP, as it's slow unless you turn on RemoteFX, but it's only available from Windows 2008 servers (I am not sure if Windows 8 supports it, though).

So my suggestion, use RDP whenever possible.

huisinro
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  • thanks for the answer. The machine that is sending the updates is unix based. From what I understand, the RDP client is actually a bridge between VNC then converts it to RDP. This maybe for only this implementation, but fits in with what you are saying about how Windows has native drivers to do it that would not be available to a unix box. – Alexis Jan 04 '13 at 17:52
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I think you are getting confused by relating RDP and VNC with chrome. VNC (Virtual Network Computing) relates to various remote support tools like Ultra VNC, Real VNC, logmeinrescue, gosupportnow, GoToMyPC etc. and RDP means remote desktop access, remote desktop protocol, Microsoft remote desktop software etc. There are various meanings associated with RDP and VNC. It is a very detailed topic discussion of which requires lot of time.

Aliasgar Babat
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