A Hybrid Data Compression Scheme for Improved VNC

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) has emerged as a promising technology in distributed computing environment since its invention in the late nineties. Successful application of VNC requires rapid data transfer from one machine to another over a TCP/IP network connection. However transfer of screen data consumes much network bandwidth and current data encoding schemes for VNC are far from being ideal. This paper seeks to improve screen data compression techniques to enable VNC over slow connections and present a reasonable speed and image quality. In this paper, a hybrid technique is proposed for improving coding efficiency. The algorithm first divides a screen image into pre-defined regions and applies encoding schemes to each area according to the region characteristics. Second, correlation of screen data in consecutive frames is exploited where multiple occurrences of similar image contents are detected. The improved results are demonstrated in a dynamic environment with various screen image types and desktop manipulation.