Technically, a remote session is achieved by capturing the screen of the remote computer and sending the screenshots to the local device frame by frame. Each frame consumes some data during transfer from end to end, so the total data usage is roughly the summation of all frames.
The data consumption of a remote session can however change hugely depending on:
- the resolution of the remote session,
- the frame rate of the remote session,
- the complexity level of the screen contents and
- the dynamics of the screen contents between frames.
There are three levels of frame rate available at the the Client app UI:
- High frame rate: 30 fps
- Medium frame rate: 15 fps
- Low frame rate: 8 fps
Take the table below as benchmark where a video is being played at 1024 x 768 resolution at the Streamer computer, and you can roughly estimate how much bandwidth your remote session consumes.
Framerate (fps) | Resolution | Network Traffic (KB/s) |
30 | 1024 x 768 | 200-400 |
15 | 1024 x 768 | 100-200 |
8 | 1024 x 768 | 50-120 |
Generally speaking, playing a video at the Streamer computer will consume much more data than ordinary office work, given the same resolution and frame rate. For estimation purpose, we can assume office work over remote session uses about 1/3 data traffic of constant video streaming.
The bandwidth required for remote office work with 1080P resolution and 30fps can thus be approximated as follow:
bandwidth lower bound = 1920 * 1080 / 1024 / 768 * 200 * (1/3) = 176 KB/s
bandwidth upper bound = 1920 * 1080 / 1024 / 768 * 400 * (1/3)= 352 KB/s
which translates to 1.4 - 2.8 Mbps (Note: 1 KB = 8 Kb)
In case you have limited bandwidth for the remote session, you can optimize the performance by:
- setting the remote computer to be solid background (available at On-Prem app's Options);
- setting the resolution to be lower during your remote session (available at Splashtop On-Prem app's gear button);
- setting the frame rate to medium or low (available at On-Prem app's toolbar) and
- using "Direct3D with YUV" as video rendering options (available at On-Prem app's Options).
Bandwidth estimation for other features:
- Remote mic: Around 96kBps(768kbps).
- USB redirect: Depends on the app you use.