Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) for iPad

Is there a Windows Remote Desktop Connection for iPad users? I use my iPad for everything, but occasionally I need to access a file on my computer. With a computer I use Remote Desktop Connection, is there something similar for iPad?"

There are a number of solutions that allow you to use an iPad to connect remotely to Windows. Some of them rely on proprietary connections, some use VNC, and a handful use Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to take advantage of the Remote Desktop Connection feature in Windows. Just be sure you choose the right one.

I looked at a bunch of the RDP iPad apps and found that most of them come up lacking because they don't support Network Level Authentication. The most important thing this means is that the connection you make from the iPad won't be at a level of security equivalent to connecting from another Windows computer. One example of this is Mocha Remote Desktop for iPad, which is available for free as Remote Desktop Lite or for $5.99 as Remote Desktop from the app store. In both cases Mocha Remote Desktop offers 40-bit encryption, which is less than the 128-bit encryption used for https web pages used to sign in to things like your bank web site.

Remote Desktop for iPadThe one Remote Desktop application with support for Network Level Authentication is iTap RDP Client. It supports 140-bit FIPS compliant encryption, which should be reliably secure. If you are used to passing system sounds from your remote computer, iTap RDP currently doesn't support sound. It also doesn't support transferring files between your iPad and the remote computer.

For more advanced features, you may want to consider and alternative to Remote Desktop like the highly secure LogMeIn, which includes iPad support with an app called LogMeIn Ignition.