What Is Windows Terminal Server?

Both Windows 2000 Terminal Services and NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition provide multiuser capabilities to their respective operating systems and they're based on the same underlying architecture. This chapter takes a closer look at this architecture, including its history and how it integrates into both the server and the client.

Conceptually, the idea behind Terminal Server is very simple, and will be familiar to anyone who has experience accessing graphical environments such as X Windows, where the application processing happens on a remote server, and only the visual input and output is handled on the client device.