The Videotile had an LCD display with pen input and a fast ATM connection to the network. The name Virtual Network Computer/Computing (VNC) originated with ORL's work on a thin client called the Videotile, which also used the RFB protocol. VNC clients and servers negotiate their capabilities with handshaking in order to use the most appropriate options supported at both ends.Īs of 2013, RealVNC Ltd claims the term 'VNC' as a registered trademark in the United States and in other countries. Such forking has not led to compatibility problems because the RFB protocol is designed to be extensible. The original GPLed source code has fed into several other versions of VNC. In 1999, AT&T acquired the lab, and in 2002 closed down the lab's research efforts.ĭevelopers who worked on VNC while still at the AT&T Research Lab include: įollowing the closure of ORL in 2002, several members of the development team (including Richardson, Harter, Weatherall and Hopper) formed RealVNC in order to continue working on open-source and commercial VNC software under that name. The Olivetti & Oracle Research Lab (ORL) at Cambridge in the UK developed VNC at a time when Olivetti and Oracle Corporation owned the lab.
