Albert M. Lai
Jason Nieh
Abstract
While many application service providers have proposed using thin-client computing to deliver computational services over the Internet, little work has been done to evaluate the effectiveness of thin-client computing in a wide-area network. To assess the potential of thin-client computing in the context of future commodity high-bandwidth Internet access, we have used a novel, noninvasive slow-motion benchmarking technique to evaluate the performance of several popular thin-client computing platforms in delivering computational services cross-country over Internet2. Our results show that using thin-client computing in a wide-area network environment can deliver acceptable performance over Internet2, even when client and server are located thousands of miles apart on opposite ends of the country. However, performance varies widely among thin-client platforms and not all platforms are suitable for this environment. While many thin-client systems are touted as being bandwidth efficient, we show that network latency is often the key factor in limiting wide-area thin-client performance. Furthermore, we show that the same techniques used to improve bandwidth efficiency often result in worse overall performance in wide-area networks. We characterize and analyze the different design choices in the various thin-client platforms and explain which of these choices should be selected for supporting wide-area computing services.
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Index Terms
- On the performance of wide-area thin-client computing
Recommendations
Limits of wide-area thin-client computing
SIGMETRICS '02: Proceedings of the 2002 ACM SIGMETRICS international conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systemsWhile many application service providers have proposed using thin-client computing to deliver computational services over the Internet, little work has been done to evaluate the effectiveness of thin-client computing in a wide-area network. To assess ...
Measuring thin-client performance using slow-motion benchmarking
Modern thin-client systems are designed to provide the same graphical interfaces and applications available on traditional desktop computers while centralizing administration and allowing more efficient use of computing resources. Despite the rapidly ...
Limits of wide-area thin-client computing
Measurement and modeling of computer systemsWhile many application service providers have proposed using thin-client computing to deliver computational services over the Internet, little work has been done to evaluate the effectiveness of thin-client computing in a wide-area network. To assess ...
Reviews
Shantanu Bhattacharya
Thin-client computing is often used if the client side requires little or no installation for the system to work. This also makes the deployment of these applications much easier compared with other applications that run on a wide area network. This is because only the server-side software needs to be installed for the whole system to work. Since there are fewer servers than clients, this comes in very handy. Nowadays, Web-based applications are generally built as thin-client applications. The authors test a wide variety of platforms for their performance in a wide area network scenario. The bandwidth used, the transmission control protocol window used, and other such parameters are carefully calculated to make the test scenario as uniform and as relevant as possible. The overall test makes a lot of sense and is well researched in terms of the various aspects chosen. However, the security scenario of these applications was not considered adequately; security is an important concern for applications running over the Internet.
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