The other big advantage of a terminal server is that it allows lots of users to remote control it at the same time. This remote control concept is what is at the heart of a terminal server it has the applications, the users just remote control it. In return the keyboard and mouse clicks are even tinier. The data contained in a view of the computers screen is tiny compared with the whole document and in the scheme of things it doesn’t change very much, no matter how fast you type. The answer to this problem is to run Word on a computer (server) in London and just send the screen view of it across the network to Edinburgh. In this organisation everyone wants to share information, but if the files are held on a file server in London then it is going to be painfully slow for the guys in Edinburgh to use Microsoft Word to open, edit and save Word documents, especially if the document is large and contains lots of graphics. If you’re wondering why that would be better than using programs running on your PC, imagine you work for an organisation with branches or sites across the country. Modern terminal servers work in the same way, all the applications run on the terminal server rather than on the PC you might use to connect to it. In the old days of green screen terminals there were no applications running on the terminal, everything ran on the big old mainframe in the next building.

They were renamed Remote Desktop Servers when Microsoft brought out Windows 2008, but actually the dumb terminal concept is quite appropriate when trying to explain “what is a terminal server”.

Terminal Servers on the other hand is a bit of an archaic term and goes back to the time when people used “dumb” terminals. Web servers serve up websites, file servers give access to files and folders, print servers manage the printing of documents and so on. Computer “servers” tend to perform a specific function.

Define windows terminal server