Apple Remote Desktop (Administrator’s Guide) - Manual (Page 72)

72 Chapter 6 Setting Up the Network and Maintaining Security
 Organize computers you’re administering using Apple Remote Desktop into small
groups, and close the Remote Desktop administrator application when not in use.
This helps reduce the number of status queries, thus reducing network traffic.
 If a client has a slow network type, consider running it in a list separate from the
faster clients. A single slow client can slow down network operations.
 If network traffic passes through firewalls, make sure you have a large Maximum
Transmission Unit (MTU) setting (1200 or greater). Too small an MTU setting can result
in black screens when sharing or sending screens.
 If you are using a wide-area network (WAN), or metropolitan area network (MAN),
make sure that the defrag bit is turned off in your router so packets don’t get
chunked up. This can result in black screens when sharing or sending screens.
 Network Address Translation (NAT) networks (such as those that use the Mac OS X
Internet Sharing feature) can pose configuration and access difficulties.
If you want to use Remote Desktop from behind a NAT router to access computers
beyond the NAT router, you need to set TCP and UDP port forwarding for ports 3283
and 5900 to your administrator computer. Similarly, if you wish to access a single client
computer that is behind a NAT router, you need to set the router to forward TCP and
UDP ports 3283 and 5900 to the client computer you wish to access.
Using Apple Remote Desktop with Computers in an AirPort
Wireless Network
Using Apple Remote Desktop to observe or control client computers connected using
AirPort wireless technology can sometimes result in impaired performance or cause
communication errors to appear in the Computer Status window.
To get the best performance from Apple Remote Desktop with computers in an AirPort
wireless network:
 Make sure that all AirPort Base Stations and all Apple Remote Desktop client
computers have the latest versions of Apple Remote Desktop software, AirPort
software, and Mac OS X software installed.
 Limit the number of clients that connect to an AirPort Base Station. AirPort clients on
a base station receive all network communication packets sent to any one client on
that base station. Although clients ignore packets that aren’t addressed to them, CPU
resources are used to identify and discard the packet.
 Scale the Control and Observe window. Apple Remote Desktop has server-side
scaling that will allow for less traffic across the network as you scale the window to
smaller sizes.
 Try not to use tasks that multicast traffic such as Share Screen and File Copy. File
Copy tries to initiate a series of individual copies if there is a significant number of
multicast networking errors.