VNC

Technology & Computing abbreviation · Networking

VNC
Stands forVirtual Network Computing
CategoriesTechnology & Computing

VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing, a networking abbreviation.

A cross-platform remote desktop system that sends screen images to a viewer and returns keyboard and mouse input, using the Remote Framebuffer (RFB) protocol. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and Raspberry Pi devices.

Example: Enable VNC on the Raspberry Pi so you can reach its desktop from your laptop.

Usage notes

Developed at the Olivetti and Oracle Research Laboratory in Cambridge, England, in the late 1990s and released as open source; RealVNC, TightVNC and TigerVNC descend from it. The default port is 5900. Basic VNC authentication is weak and traffic may be unencrypted, so connections are usually tunneled over SSH or a VPN. The Screen Sharing feature in macOS is VNC-compatible.

More networking abbreviations

  • TFTP – Trivial File Transfer Protocol
  • TTL – Time to live
  • UDP – User Datagram Protocol
  • UPnP – Universal Plug and Play
  • UTP – Unshielded twisted pair
  • VLAN – Virtual LAN
  • VPN – Virtual private network
  • VXLAN – Virtual Extensible LAN
  • WAN – Wide area network
  • WAP – Wireless access point
  • WEP – Wired Equivalent Privacy
  • WLAN – Wireless local area network

See all 113 networking abbreviations →