citrix winframe and associated software

[David S. Vaughan]

We installed a Winframe server late last year.  Currently, we are using it to serve up telnet access to our catalogue at one branch and to provide staff with access to resources on the network server.

In addtion to the reasons you cite, we also chose it because it allows us to serve up access to Windows apps from the server without having to worry about the fact that as many as a third of our branches will only have access to the network at phone line speeds (i.e. 33.6k modems).  With Winframe, only screen displays and input travels over the line, not the actual programs or data, so that the bandwidth requirements are low enough to make serving applications over these connections feasible.

At the branch, we are using Winterms from Wyse Technologies as the public terminals.  These are basically "smart terminals" with a standard PC keyboard, a PS2 mouse, and serial, parallel, and 10baseT ports.  The terminals firmware is a simple OS that can use either a serial or TCP connection to transport Citrix's proprietary ICA protocol (used to transport the I/O data to/from the Winframe server).  There are no disk drives, so that this is effectively a diskless PC.

As to performance, bandwidth is a factor although, as I stated above, Citrix has designed Winframe to minimize bandwidth requirements.  The real factor is to make sure you have a dedicated server with plenty of horsepower.  If I remember correctly, Citrix recommends 4-8 MB per simultaneous user (depending on apps used) and a maximum of 15 users per Pentium (i.e. go with a multiprocessor box, preferably with P Pro).

I haven't tried serving web access over Winframe yet, primarily because we haven't put in our Internet connection yet (but it's coming soon).  Two quick considerations:

1. The current release of Winframe is based on NT 3.51.  Therefore, users are presented with Program Manager rather than a
    Win95 desktop.  There is an NT4.0 version coming shortly (according to our vendor).

2. Since Winframe is NT based, you have to make sure that the apps you are using will run under NT.  If you are serving up
    Web access, for instance, you want to use an NT browser, or a 32 bit browser that is compatible with both NT and 95.



-----Original Message-----
From:	jim hewitt [SMTP:hewitt at gloria.cord.edu]
Sent:	Monday, March 24, 1997 9:01 AM
To:	Multiple recipients of list
Subject:	citrix winframe and associated software

we're looking at using winframe for our public terminals for the following
reasons:
	...better control over what programs (NOT WHAT CONTENT) is provided from
those 
		using our web based library catalog
	...not having full function pc's which can introduce viruses, give access
to the hard drive (won't 		be any) for hackers
	...and a bonus we found out after looking into the possibility:  using our
campus dump of 386's 		and slow 486's sans their hard drives and floppy
drives as an unending supply of 		terminals running on the winframe network

while we are not a huge library, we see the immediate implementation of 35
terminals in public areas...

are there any other libraries who are exploring this option at the moment?
are there are who have already had some experience with "dumb-smart windows
terminals" as the base for their public access to either their library
catalog or the world wide web?

we hope to get around some of the problems others here have mentioned about
downloading, telnet to chat, irc programs, etc. in our library reference
areas with this program...if it has worked for you, and especially if it
hasn't, please respond to me and i'll respond to the list...

this might even be the basis for a software application listserv for those
of us involved???