ICA & Bandwidth

[snootalope]

Hello

I've been testing this NetFlow product recently to try and determine why our frame-relay lines contiune to get hammered (bandwidth wise).

After installing this product, it's obvious as ever whats going on. Metaframe (or connections on tcp 1494) are utilizing sometimes 100% of our lines, yet there's only 8 people in each office!! And the lines are fractional T1's with a CIR of 768k each.

Our network looks like this. The home office holds all the Citrix servers. Each remote office has nothing but dumb terminals that have ICA clients (Wyse Terminals w/ ICA 8.05).

Just in the recent hour, here's what I'm seeing. Metaframe traffic racks up 51% of the traffic with 45.4mb transfered. The next closest service is our VoIP system, which should be utilizing the most considering the QoS ans policing on the frame.

So, my question is. Is there anything I can do to compress or cut down the traffic of the ICA connections? I'm thinking, if my users down there have backgrounds with pictures of their cats and dogs or whatever, that'd add just that much more traffic to the screen packets being sent right??

I'm just wonding if there's anyone out there who's found an efficient way to manage the ICA traffic through out their WAN.

Thanks for any advice!
snooter

 

[keithv719]

I would be sure to disable audio across Citrix, or change it to low. And set the print bandwidth to a set level and adjust it as needed. Also lock the backgrounds so they cant be changed and force low color resolution to the users.

I do all of this and i can run 20+ people off a single t1 that is shared with another 75 people locally with no speed issues.

 

[snootalope]

Thanks, I'm assuming you're using Policy's?

That printer bandwidth option in the policy's, do you know if that requires the users to connect to a published desktop rather then static in order to work? That might sound like a stupid question, but I cant remember where I saw that as a requirement before.

As for the backgrounds, that's gonna be tough. I know very well that all the users in the remote offices LOVE their background stuff and take it pretty seriously.....they're gonna hate me for a while again!!

 

[scanjam]

From our experience we disable everything (the virtual ICA channels)

However 50mb of traffic sounds beyond excessive for citrix ICA. Can you limit the printers that are connected, disable drive mapping, and set the kbps limits on the virtual channels. Perhaps even disabling all virtual channels, testing the network congstion then, and then slowly re adding the virtual channels to see which one is killing the network...

I find it hard to believe that the typical citrix "finger painting" would be ever utilise 100% of a t1 connection for just 8 users, so there seems like a DEFINITE problem.....

i always start at virtual channel and always have the screen effects and widnwos "themes" disabled.

good luck!!

 

[bran2235]

Do you have any laptops in your remote sites (in addition to your thin clients)? We hav the exact same setup as you and we have fractional Ts (786) to each remote. Laptops can kill you in a thin client environment...

Just a thought-
Brandon

 

[patrickrouse]

1. Limit each session to a number like 150Kbps (via Citrix Policy)
2. Limit printing bandwidth to smething like 50 or 75Kbps (via Citrix Policy)
3. Disable Flash, Shockwave, Windows Media Player, any other non-business related software that uses animation.
4. Monitor the ICA Sessions with System Monitor Control, to see who's hogging the connection

If you use Citrix over WAN connections and do not utilize the Bandwidth management policies you're allowing users to abuse your pipe. These policies will prevent one, or a few users from saturating the connection, and causing poor performance for everyone.

I have 10-15 users connecting all the time over a T1 connection and never use more than 50% of the connection. I also limit the bandwidth at the firewall, so the Citrix Server traffic can't use more than the amount I define.


Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server

http://www.sessioncomputing.com

 

[snootalope]

Where is the policy for limiting each sessions bandwidth?

I see the one for the printer, but not a particular session. We're using Metaframe XPa 1.0 w/FR3 if that makes a difference.

Also, where I can find the System Monitor Control? Is this part of the resource manager? If so, that's another thing we're not licensed for..

 

[patrickrouse]

I believe policies were introduced with MetaFrame PS3. System Control Monitor (aka Perfmon) is a standard Windows MMC ActiveX Control that can be run from any workstation.

Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server

http://www.sessioncomputing.com

 

[snootalope]

ah.. thought you were talking about a Citrix specific tool. I'll check that out.

Which snap-ins do you monitor exaclty?

 

[patrickrouse]

Start -> Run -> MMC -> Add/Remove Snap-in -> Active X Control -> System Monitor Control -> Right Click -> Add Counters -> Select counters from computer (Select one of your Citrix Servers) -> Performance Object -> ICA
Session -> Outbound Session Bandwidth

http://www.sessioncomputing.com/images/ICA_Outbound_Bandwidth.JPG

http://www.sessioncomputing.com/images/ICA_Printer_Bandwidth_Limiting.jpg

Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server

http://www.sessioncomputing.com