Section 7.3: Connecting to Terminal Services

A listener connection, called the RDP-TCP connection, must be configured and exist on the server for clients to successfully establish Terminal Services sessions to that server. RDP-TCP connections can be configured for RDP only over TCP/IP, and only one RDP-TCP connection can be configured for each network interface card in the Terminal Services computer. By default, the RDP-TCP connection is created that is bound to all the network interface cards in the server. If the server has more than one network interface card, an administrator can configure the default RDP-TCP connection to only be associated with one network interface card, and create new RDP-TCP connections for each of the other network interface cards.

Windows Server 2003 provides two primary mechanisms that clients can use to connect to Terminal Services. These mechanisms are the Remote Desktop Connection utility, and the Remote Desktops snap-in.

7.3.1: The Remote Desktop Connection Utility

The Remote Desktop Connection utility is the standard client for connecting to Terminal Services, via RDA on a server or Terminal Services on a Terminal Server. It can be used for Remote Administration or full Terminal Server client use. It enables a user to connect to a single server running Terminal Services using the RDP protocol over TCP/IP. The utility is installed by default with the operating system in Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003. It can also be installed and used on a number of older Windows operating systems, including Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows ME, Windows 98, and Windows 95.

The Remote Desktop Connection utility is backward compatible and capable of communicating with Terminal Services in Windows 2000, and Windows NT 4.0, Terminal Server Edition.

7.3.2: The Remote Desktops Snap-In

The Remote Desktops snap-in is another utility that can be used to establish Terminal Services connections to Windows Server 2003 and terminal servers. The Remote Desktop snap-in contains two important features:

• It can be used to connect to multiple Windows Server 2003 computers using Terminal Services; and

• It enables a remote connection to the console session

The Remote Desktops snap-in is not available on Windows XP Professional computers but you can use it on a Windows XP Professional computer to manage your servers, by installing the Admin Pack (adminpak.msi) on the Windows XP Professional computer. The Admin Pack is located in the i386 folder on the Windows Server 2003 Installation CD.