Remote Desktop Protocol: what is to know?

These days Remote Access is very fashionable, because of its great utility, lower costs, configuration outside the physical place and because it allows the employee to be available 24 hours. Beyond all this, there are countless applications that provide the service of remote access or remote control as they are called in some places, even through cell phones, PDAs, etc. The most important thing when opting for one of these is to know how they work, what encryption protocols it uses and what port it uses, to know how to configure and know what we are leaving open on our computers.

Now we do get into this powerful protocol. As its name says RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) is a protocol developed by Microsoft, based on T.120 and that allows us to access a desktop from a distant point or even, within our network, forming an environment Server-Client. Basically, the process consists of putting the information generated by the computer that plays the role of server in RDP format and showing it to the computer that plays the role of client.

RDP radiography                                      

One of the things that stand out is that this protocol has the possibility of sending information through 64,000 independent channels and only uses one when we make a remote connection. This allows the same data to be sent through the other channels in real time, but without repeating it, making a shipment in parts and being able that several administrators work on the same server. Another interesting thing is that RDP is designed to support different logical topologies, so its versatility leaves no doubt about it.

Also, and spinning finer for programmers or those who want to get their hands on this protocol, RDP is encapsulated and encrypted within TCP / IP, but it is developed to be independent in the TCP / IP transport stack, leaving open the possibility of add other transport drivers and make it more secure. Broadly speaking, it uses an RDP driver for the transfer of UI, compression, encryption, frames and TCP / IP as a transport driver who ensures the travel and arrival of packets over the network. This once again shows the versatility and performance of the protocol. Good point is that RDP does not need servers for it to be used. RDP uses port 3389 / TCP, to open the ports of the devices on our network when we want to use the service, or to close it for security reasons.

Versatility through many Configurations

One of the most important things about this protocol is that it uses 128 bit encryption, the RC4 and TLS algorithm, making this protocol one of the safest ways to access Remote Desktops. Among the configurations we can modify is: the use of colors, use the audio, share the clipboard and various Drag and Drop utilities, the smoothness of the letters, the effects of desktop, compression to our liking, thus achieving bandwidth optimization.

Finally, and as if to close this brief comment on the RDP protocol, we tell you that it is not only used for Desktop access, but that the engineers developed a Remote Printing environment based on RDP, this means that one can use printers from anywhere on the planet, using this protocol in between.