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Remote desktop: RDP versus the alternatives

Connecting to a VPS usually means remote desktop. The protocol matters for how responsive the experience feels.

Windows' built-in RDP is efficient and widely used. It compresses the display, adapts to bandwidth, and handles fonts and colors well. Under a poor connection, it degrades gracefully.

Alternatives like VNC send screen images more directly and can be slower or choppier, though some versions are tuned for low latency. Third-party tools such as Parsec are designed for gaming and offer very low delay and high frame rates, at the price of more bandwidth.

The remote desktop protocol doesn't affect the VPS's connection to the broker. Orders sent from the VPS are as fast as the VPS allows. What changes is the delay between the trader's click and the command reaching the VPS.

For automated systems, it doesn't matter. For manual trading from a VPS, it does, since each click has to travel to the VPS, execute, and the screen has to come back.

For manual scalpers, many choose to run the platform locally and use the VPS only for automation.

Clicking trades over remote desktop versus a local terminal: how does the experience compare?

I tried clicking trades over RDP to a VPS in London for a few months and went back to a local terminal for manual scalping. The connection itself was fine most of the time, but I could feel an extra delay of roughly 50 to 100 ms between my click and the order button reacting, and occasionally the screen would freeze for a second during a fast move.

The bigger issue was that the platform on the VPS was closer to the broker, so the order itself went through quickly, but my reaction to the chart was based on a picture that was already slightly behind. For a manual trader the delay that matters is the one between seeing and clicking.

Now I run my expert advisors and trade copier on the VPS and trade by hand on my home machine with a cabled connection. I connect to the VPS by RDP only to check logs or restart something, and for that RDP is perfectly good.