Hi all - I received this question from a client today re; OI. Postings on VPN and TS are a bit slim other than speed issues, and I do not have any experience in this arena. Any advice greatly appreciated!

Mike O.

2. Will it will run under terminal services? I plan on using Terminal Services for the two remote PC's Andrew has out in the Park. They will be connected via VPN and I therefore need a low bandwidth solution. All main office PC's will run in the normal way

Mike,

We have a couple of sites we connect to via VPN and TS and all works fine with OI, etc.

"…low bandwidtd…" not sure what is meant here, but I hope this does not mean dial-up.

HTH,

Ray Chan

VPN and TS work quite well.

Speed issues will primarily be related to your connection speed (client and server access). Although we haven't i have talked to some that use TS and strongly suggest using Citrix.

Also the server you are using for TS really needs to be hefty (not a trash bag but big and brauny .. no that is a paper towel..). Some will tell you that servers work well above 20 users but doing any 'real work' (not like a manager poking around :) becomes tiresome with more than 10 users on a well built server.

or so we find

dsig

I work every day over Terminal Services across a VPN. My connection speed is 384K and it works fine. Don't care for Citrix myself. Terminal Services with Remote Desktop is more like just working on a PC. You can also try it, and in most cases, use it for free. Just use Remote Desktop to connect to just about any PC and try it out. Obviously, multi-processor servers with a lot of memory will handle more users… Terminal Services (unlimited users) comes free with Windows 2000 Server. Windows 2003 Server includes 2 free Administrator licenses that you can use, as long as you have Administrator privileges.

When you install a program on a Terminal Services box, make sure you Run… "change user /install" before you install the program, then "change user /execute" after the installation is done. This sets up the program's environment so that it behaves when run in multiple sessions.

I suggest you at least try Terminal Services before you spend the money on Citrix.

We have many clients who use Citrix, which is essentially the same as TS.

You may need to consider colour issues, such as 32 bit colour may have some display problems (at least can on Citrix).

If your client limits the colour settings for speed, then some colours can look funny, especially on buttons. Many not be an issue, but worth knowing just in case.

There is also an issue with OI when each user returns the same Station Id. This may cause problems if you use Station Id in your application and also in some cases causes slow logins.

THis can be resolved by changing the Environment Variable in SYSENV, field 32 to call a procedure.

We have appended the Time() to the Station Id to make it unique and resolve these issues.

I have not tried this on OI7 yet so may not be a problem anyway.

Colin

Only issue I can thing of would be of remote printers. Usualy, if the TS box has the same drivers installed as the remote site, you should not have a problem. Some brands of printers may give you a problem and even some models of HP (which I previously thought infailable).

Pascal

WOW! Thanks all!

Mike

HP does specify which models that are TS compatible…

Well, I will get into trouble with this, but ….

Why use Terminal Services? You have a network already. Throw a couple of recycled PCs on the network, configure them for remote operation using VNC, and remove the monitors and keyboards. From an administration standpoint this should be bone simple, and the need for hefty TS servers is eliminated.

In the old days, I stacked up modems on top of my multiuser hosts, at about $100 per modem, as simpler than PCs. Now we can stack up remote session PCs for about the same price, simpler than TS servers.

and in the old days i used to use a papertape to start my computer but now i opt for more 'modern' solutions

I use VNC with most all of my clients when they only need a quick login or connection to their own machines .. BUT VNC is slower and I am not sure it is a good solution for adding 'users' to a system. In fact when i am on the road VCN is my friend (just like google and Johnny Walker .

TS works well .. not that hard to set up and licensing not terribly expensive.

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