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TS + Citrix Troubleshooting

TS & Citrix FAQ - Performance

1. How can I measure RDP bandwidth usage?
2. Can I enhance graphics performance by installing a better video card in the server?
3. How can I improve the quality of video in a TS session?

Other FAQ sections: Installation | Server configuration | Client resources | User issues | Licensing | Printing | Connectivity | Profiles | Performance | Applications | Administration & Monitoring | More FAQS

Q: How can I measure RDP bandwidth usage?
Last modified: June 17, 2007

A: You can use Network Monitor (Netmon) to capture all RDP traffic. You can install Netmon on your server through Add/Remove Windows components.

Before starting the capture:

• Choose Capture - Buffer settings and increase the buffer size to 256 MB
• Choose Capture - Trigger, check Buffer space, 100%, and Stop Capture
• Choose Capture - Filter, Create two pattern matches, connected by an OR condition. One for an offset of 0x22 with a pattern of 0d3d and a second one with an offset of 0x24 with a pattern of 0d3d

These patterns tell Netmon to only capture data with a source or destination port of 3389 (the default port for RDP)
• Click the Start capture button, check the Captured Statistics section (the numbers should be increasing), and then minimize Netmon. You want to minimize Netmon because the updating of its display will generate rdp traffic thus skewing the numbers.

Check back later to view the results. Netmon will stop capturing automatically when it has captured approximately 256 MB of RDP traffic. You can look at the elapsed time, captured frames, captured bytes, and calculate bandwidth statistics from them.

It is also possible to adjust your filtering so that you only capture packets from certain IP addresses.

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Q: Can I enhance graphics performance by installing a better video card in the server?
Last modified: November 24, 2007

A: No, adding a fancy video card to a terminal server will have no effect on the client experience.

All graphical output created inside the TS user sessions is directed through the RDP video driver, which converts the GDI calls into an RDP video stream being forwarded to the network driver. So it does not matter what video card is installed on the server.

Things look differently on the client side. Here good graphics hardware can make quite some difference compared to poor performing video cards.
The RDP data stream is forwarded to the RDP client application, which converts the included video information into graphics commands displayed by the local video driver and video card. A fast video card in conjunction with enough CPU power (used for RDP decompression and decryption) on the client side means better graphics performance.

Graphics performance is also affected by the network bandwidth available for the RDP data stream.

For more background information about Remote Display protocols, check:
Remote display protocols for VDI: will RDP be enough?

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Q: How can I improve the quality of video in a TS session?
Last modified: June 14, 2008

A: RDP wasn't primarily designed for streaming video, and the quality is often a problem. It is dependent on a number of things, like the network speed, available bandwidth and the graphics hardware on the client.
The video card on the Terminal Server has no impact on the video performance in a TS session, as explained here.

In Windows 2008 and Vista, a fixed percentage of bandwidth (by default 70%) is allocated to video, and the rest is available for all other redirections. Bandwidth Allocation for Terminal Server connections over RDP explains how you can modify the default bandwidth distribution between display and virtual channels.

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