Remote Desktop very slow over LAN

Question

[Reposted here as suggested by a moderator of answers.microsoft.com]

In the earlier versions of Windows 10, I was able to make VoIP calls from a remote machine over RDP or more or less smoothly play video files there. Neither of these two are possible at this point. RDP sessions created over a 1 Gbps wired LAN are so slow that I often see image tearing, remote sound is unusable (stuttering), etc. Even as simple an operation as minimizing a window takes two or three seconds to finish (i.e., one clicks the Minimize button, nothing happens for a couple of seconds, and only then the window finally disappears).

The remote machine is a Windows 10 workstation (dual Intel Xeon, 128 GB RAM), the client machine is a Windows 11 laptop (10th gen. Intel Core i7, 16 GB RAM). Both machines are on the same 1 Gbps wired LAN (workstation <--> managed switch <--> laptop). Here's what I've tried so far:

• Disabling UDP for RDP via Registry does not make any noticeable difference in terms of the described issue (although it improves stability if one needs to transfer larger files over RDP).
• Using the Remote Desktop UWP app results in even worse performance than the built-in Terminal Services app (significant mouse cursor lag etc.)
• Changing the connection options (windowed mode instead of fullscreen, 16bit color depth instead of 24bit or 32bit, enabling desktop composition or bitmap caching, choosing the connection bandwidth manually, etc.) does not improve the situation unless a relatively low screen resolution (up to ca. 1440x900 px) is specified. Anything above 1920x1080 px is painfully slow (and, unfortunately, I really need at least a Quad HD resolution for the work I am doing over RDP).
• Pinging the workstation produces consistent 1ms replies without any packet loss. Transmitting large files between the two machines (e.g., via SFTP) is without any issues and the transfer speed corresponds to the LAN speed.

Clearly, this is a software problem because both machines are powerful enough and the LAN connection also exceeds what any RDP session could reasonably need.

Is there anything else I could try?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Have you tried network adapter settings on the Win 10 "Host"? You could start by disabling features like RSS and offloads to see if that helps. Here is a good reference for tuning: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/networking/technologies/network-subsystem/net-sub-performance-tuning-nics