Hey, Very interesting use case.
Could you provide a little more detail about the “low-bandwidth” connections your learners are dealing with? In particular, what sort of speeds do you typically see (download/upload), and roughly what latency or ping times are common? It would also be useful to know whether those figures are relatively stable or whether bandwidth and latency fluctuate significantly during a session. That context would help when thinking about what Guacamole/RDP/VNC tuning is likely to make a meaningful difference. Best regards, On Wed, Aug 19, 2026 at 2:58 AM E-DEFENCE <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello everyone, > > We run Apache Guacamole in production at a training academy in > Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to give learners browser access to hands-on > cybersecurity lab machines over SSH, RDP and VNC. It has been a good fit > for us: our learners connect from a wide range of devices, often without > the rights to install a client, and the browser removes that whole class of > problems. > > Two questions, both coming from real constraints on our side. > > 1. Tuning for low-bandwidth and high-latency links. > > A significant share of our learners connect over mobile networks where > bandwidth is limited and latency is high. We have already reduced colour > depth and disabled desktop composition on the RDP side. Are there other > parameters the community has found to matter most in this situation, and is > there a rule of thumb for what remains usable for text-oriented work such > as a terminal session? We would also be interested to know whether anyone > has measured the practical difference between RDP and VNC under those > conditions. > > 2. Provisioning short-lived lab connections. > > Our labs are created for a session and destroyed afterwards, so > connections have to be created and removed programmatically rather than by > hand. We currently do this through the REST API. Is this the approach the > community would recommend for that pattern, or is there a better > established way when connections are ephemeral and tied to a learner > account for a limited time? > > Any pointer to existing discussions on these topics is very welcome. We > are happy to report back on what works for us, in case it is useful to > others operating in similar network conditions. > > Best regards, > > Lassane NACOULMA > E-DEFENCE, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso > > >
