I have experimented a bit with this and with another HTML5 (browser-based) client -- ThinRDP.
In my opinion, RemoteSpark is the better system, but both systems leave something to be desired. RemoteSpark is very responsive, it forwards audio and is generally nice to work with. It also allows users to drag and drop files from a user's local desktop onto the remote computer (actually to a directory on the "gateway" computer which is then forwarded to the remote VCL computer). The system is supposed to support printing, but I was unable to get that to work in my tests. The other RDP feature that doesn't work over a browser is that of forwarding disks. RemoteSpark handles this in a somewhat creative way, but if users are accustomed to accessing network drives that are forwarded over RDP, then this could present challenges. The other big downside is that the license is $4,800 per concurrent gateway, and all RDP traffic must be routed through these "gateways". Presumably, for a large VCL setup, multiple gateways would be needed, and so the cost could become quite prohibitive. There is no academic discount. The basic architecture for these systems is that there must be some server that sits between the VCL computer and the user's local machine. The gateway converts the RDP traffic to an http WebSocket stream, and drawn on an HTML5 <canvas> object. For RemoteSpark, this gateway server is separate from the VCL, while for ThinRDP, this is a service that runs inside the VCL computer. There is also an open source project that aims to do this: http://guac-dev.org, currently in alpha release, but it appears to be under active development. I have not experimented with this, but it looks quite promising. Aaron -- Aaron Coburn Systems Administrator and Programmer Academic Technology Services, Amherst College [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> On Oct 10, 2012, at 9:01 AM, Aaron Peeler <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: This is pretty cool. http://www.remotespark.com/html5.html Anyone experimented with it or something similar. Thanks, Aaron -- Aaron Peeler Program Manager Virtual Computing Lab NC State University All electronic mail messages in connection with State business which are sent to or received by this account are subject to the NC Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties.
