Desktop Sharing
Desktop sharing is a common name for technologies, products and services that allow remote access and remote collaboration on a person’s computer desktop via a graphical terminal emulator.
The most common industry scenarios for desktop sharing are:
- Remote log-in
- Real-time collaboration
Remote log-in allows users to connect to their own desktop while being physically away from their computer. Systems that support the X Windowns System, typically Unix-based ones, have this ability “built in”. Windows versions starting from Windows 2000 have a built-in solution for remote access as well in the form of Remote Desktop Protocol.
The open source product VNC provides cross-platform solution for remote log-in.
The shortcoming of the above solutions are their inability to work outside of a single NAT environment. A number of commercial products overcome this restriction by tunneling the traffic through rendezvous servers.
Real-time collaboration is much a bigger area of desktop sharing use, and it has gained recent momentum as an important component of rich multimedia communications. Desktop sharing, when used in conjunction with other components of multimedia communications such as audio and video, creates the notion of virtual space where people can meet, socialize and work together. On the larger scale, this area is always referred as web conferencing.
Desktop sharing is important to have when trying to do multi-point demos and information sharing… not to mention team collaboration. Imagine you are working with several of your team members on a budget… and you can pass input and manipulation control as you would a baton. This is true collaboration. Find a product to allow you to share your desktop and applications inside of web conferencing at our whitepaper, to the left.