WAAS RDP Optimization

[dinesh.thathanath]

Has anybody been able to see any optization on Microsoft RDP (Port 3389)?.

Is RDP traffic compressed/encrypted?.

Any support appreciated.

Cheers,

Dinesh

[Eric Rose]

Yes I have seen huge saving when the default encryption and compression was disables for the MS RDP protocols on port 3389.

Thanks

Eric

[Jan Rockstedt]

Hi,

O yes the resond is very fast.

Jan

[dinesh.thathanath]

Thanks Eric, Jan.

Can someone tell me how do I disable compression/encryption for RDP on the client side?

Additionally my CM Optimzation suggests that my original traffic was 10GB excluding passthrough and the optimized traffic is close to 11GB. Did anyone see such kind of data where optimized data is more than original?

-Dinesh

[Eric Rose · Accepted solution]

Hi Dinesh,

Here is a document that talks about the process.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns517/ns224/ns377/deployment_guide_c07-493981.html#wp9000716

also when you "optimize" compressed data the output is actually more (larger) data.

so when you see the optimize traffic is more than the originial traffic, this is a sign that the original traffic is already compressed or encrypted.

for example when you compress a jpg the result is larger.

Thanks,

Eric

P.S. please mark this question as answered with a 5 if this answers your question.

[dinesh.thathanath]

Many Thanks Eric.

Cheers,

Dinesh

[dinesh.thathanath]

Thanks ERIC.

To summarize if I do the following things, will RDP be optimized on a WinXP machine?

1. Disabling Compression on the RDP File

                Step 1. Open the RDP connection (.rdp) file in Notepad.

                Step 2. Change the line compression:i:1 to compression:i:0.

                Step 3. Save the file.

2. Disabling Encryption

Registry keys:

• Set HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\MinEncryptionLevel to 1.

• Create HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\SecurityLayer as a DWORD value and set it to 0.

• Restart PC.

Is this the same procedure followed?

We tried disabling the compression with no luck. Will try doing the step 2 as well.

Thanks,

Dinesh

[Eric Rose]

yes from what I can find

step 1 is done on the client.

step 2 is done on the RDP server.

also note if your RDP terminal server is a windows xp 32 bit version you will need to apply the hot fix from MSFT.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;956072

[johng231]

Do you recommend setting the RDP policy to Full TFO after you have disabled compression/encryption on the client side?

[Eric Rose]

Yes, if you modify the default setting for RDP. In order to gian the benefits or disabling compression/encryption, you have to modify the default policy to full optimization.

Thanks.

[dinesh.thathanath]

Finally got the RDP optimization working.

The terminal server was overriding the compression settings done on Default.RDP file. Once the seetings on Server was done for disabling encryption and compression, everything just worked great. Many thanks to you guys.

Any idea even after 80% optimization, why on the following output Bytes written for optimized traffic is more than Bytes written for original traffic?

Connection Id:            14800

    Peer Id:                  00:21:5e:73:0e:cf

    Connection Type:          EXTERNAL SERVER

    Start Time:               Wed Jun  9 11:21:36 2010

    Source IP Address:        192.168.120.199

    Source Port Number:       3600

    Destination IP Address:   192.168.1.174

    Destination Port Number:  3389

    Application Name:         Remote-Desktop

    Classifier Name:          MS-Terminal-Services

    Map Name:                 basic

    Directed Mode:            FALSE

    Preposition Flow:         FALSE

    Policy Details:

           Configured:        TCP_OPTIMIZE + DRE + LZ

              Derived:        TCP_OPTIMIZE + DRE + LZ

                 Peer:        TCP_OPTIMIZE + DRE + LZ

           Negotiated:        TCP_OPTIMIZE + DRE + LZ

              Applied:        TCP_OPTIMIZE + DRE + LZ

    Accelerator Details:      None

                                    Original            Optimized

                        -------------------- --------------------

    Bytes Read:                      5818686                58462

    Bytes Written:                     50869              1075183

    Total Reduction Ratio: 80.686%

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Dinesh

[Eric Rose]

                                   Original            Optimized

                        --------------------  --------------------

    Bytes Read:                       5818686                58462

    Bytes Written:                     50869               1075183

These number are based in each direction from my understansing.

from the reference guide.

Number of bytes that have been read and written on  the original (incoming) side and the optimized (outgoing) side.

you should look at the DRE statistics for this connection to get the reduction values in both directions.

[dinesh.thathanath]

Yes thats right Eric.

But optimized traffic cannot be more than original isn't it?. The Ref guide doesnt really talk about this in detail.

-Dinesh