how to make Terminal server read PDF faster

Setting up a DFS that will replicate main office documents to the other location will provide access to read-only documents faster.  Modifiable documents will run into issues if two people modify the same file, the changes will reflect last file saved.

How fast is your upstream internet speed and how many users are connected when you notice this slow scrolling?

Hi irietek,

We faced this exact issue with image-heavy PDFs and in fact PDFs in general.  AFAIK there is no way to resolve this for a 2003 terminal server.  If you upgrade to Windows 2012 then you will take advantage of the significant developments in the RDP protocol over the last 10 years.  (Bear in kind that Windows 2003 will go out of support soon, so the server will need replacing anyway).

In our scenario we eventually implemented Citrix XenApp and found the performance on slow/narrow links to be very good.  It completely resolved our problem of laggy PDF scrolling.

The issue here isn't the software or the TS, it's the speed at which the data flows between your clients and the TS.

Tonto - that's not actually the case.  The problem is inherent in the remote desktop protocol, in that it transmits screen bitmaps across the wire.  Each time you scroll down 1 'bump' on the image/pdf the whole screen is bitmapped and redrawn which proves very inefficient.  Even if you knock the quality and window size right down you will STILL have laggy PDFs because the images aren't handled in a sensible way (GDI or caching on the client).

Also in the RDP Connection Options, Experience Tab, an important setting is 'Persistent bitmap caching.'  turn that on. That has always helped me.

But for the rest of them turn them off!

- gurutc

I have tried all your said, but seems scrolling pdf still very slow. smaller windows, change resolution, check the bitmap caching, not really big increase. but I did see th different when I using Ericom Blaze. so any other brand software you recommand?

Just wondering if i change my T1 1.5M line into T1 3M , will it give me much better perfomance? or just little bit better?

thanks

That's why I asked about your internet speed going to a 3meg line will show you a drastic improvement for remote workers over RDP.

Your current T1 is probably shared by other internet communications and this also affects performance.

One other thing you can do is to implement QOS on your firewall.  Consider giving RDP traffic priority during high business usage hours.