RemoteApp and Bandwidth Usage
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@NetworkNerd said:
I think we have some network issues to sort out over there. The users at this remote site have no web filter and are pulling files, a company intranet site, Epicor, e-mail, and most everything else from the main site. There is one Engineering server over at this site that synchronizes with a server at the main site occasionally, but I was thinking we had verified that this is only happening in the evenings.
This seems like quite a bit of traffic going over a T1, how many users do you have over there? Do some of them stream music/video? Do you use a client based email system where some users will be downloading the same attachment multiple times (more then one user downloading the same attachment?)
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@coliver said:
@NetworkNerd said:
I think we have some network issues to sort out over there. The users at this remote site have no web filter and are pulling files, a company intranet site, Epicor, e-mail, and most everything else from the main site. There is one Engineering server over at this site that synchronizes with a server at the main site occasionally, but I was thinking we had verified that this is only happening in the evenings.
This seems like quite a bit of traffic going over a T1, how many users do you have over there? Do some of them stream music/video? Do you use a client based email system where some users will be downloading the same attachment multiple times (more then one user downloading the same attachment?)
We have about 10 users total. I'm not 100% certain about the streaming aspect, but I would think if anyone knew they were streaming they would quickly be lynched as the people over there know they have limited bandwidth.
We use Exchange 2010 hosted at our main site (clients using cached Exchange mode). But users at this site normally tell us things pick up when Engineers are not over there working.
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@NetworkNerd said:
@coliver said:
@NetworkNerd said:
I think we have some network issues to sort out over there. The users at this remote site have no web filter and are pulling files, a company intranet site, Epicor, e-mail, and most everything else from the main site. There is one Engineering server over at this site that synchronizes with a server at the main site occasionally, but I was thinking we had verified that this is only happening in the evenings.
This seems like quite a bit of traffic going over a T1, how many users do you have over there? Do some of them stream music/video? Do you use a client based email system where some users will be downloading the same attachment multiple times (more then one user downloading the same attachment?)
We have about 10 users total. I'm not 100% certain about the streaming aspect, but I would think if anyone knew they were streaming they would quickly be lynched as the people over there know they have limited bandwidth.
We use Exchange 2010 hosted at our main site (clients using cached Exchange mode). But users at this site normally tell us things pick up when Engineers are not over there working.
So it works fine 80% of the time but then the latency spikes for 20% of the time? Guessing on the actual numbers but it does sound like link saturation. Not sure how else you could test it though.
I find it hard to believe that an application linked to a live database is more forgiving with latency then a RemoteApp.
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@NetworkNerd said:
@coliver said:
@NetworkNerd said:
I think we have some network issues to sort out over there. The users at this remote site have no web filter and are pulling files, a company intranet site, Epicor, e-mail, and most everything else from the main site. There is one Engineering server over at this site that synchronizes with a server at the main site occasionally, but I was thinking we had verified that this is only happening in the evenings.
This seems like quite a bit of traffic going over a T1, how many users do you have over there? Do some of them stream music/video? Do you use a client based email system where some users will be downloading the same attachment multiple times (more then one user downloading the same attachment?)
We have about 10 users total. I'm not 100% certain about the streaming aspect, but I would think if anyone knew they were streaming they would quickly be lynched as the people over there know they have limited bandwidth.
We use Exchange 2010 hosted at our main site (clients using cached Exchange mode). But users at this site normally tell us things pick up when Engineers are not over there working.
Yeup, someone is slurping bandwidth.
Can you get a second pipe into the place, cheap DSL or Cable? I have a Peplink 300 I can loan out to you, can handle 15Mbps total worth of traffic, more than enough for a single T1 and a 6Mpbs pipe. Don't even have to do anything on the T1/VPN side of things, just put it into drop in mode and set up some rules to shuffle HTTP/HTTPS traffic over the cheap pipe.
That way you can bug management to get a bigger pipe into the place. Or a bigger Peplink.
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Here's a shot of what is happening. The 8-9 ms is what we get when everyone is away from their computer (pretty consistently). But even during periods of heavy use, there's never a latency spike like this at our other sites. But none of them are running over a T1, either.
Regarding the additional connection, I remember looking into that not long ago, but the issue is we are on the hook for 3 years for the T1. I think we are about 1.5 years into it now.
The investigation continues.
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@NetworkNerd said:
Regarding the additional connection, I remember looking into that not long ago, but the issue is we are on the hook for 3 years for the T1. I think we are about 1.5 years into it now.
It may be worth eating the cost and getting another connection in there. Even bonding it and just allowing the RemoteApp traffic to go through the new connection. Something to consider especially if productivity is being impacted as much as you described.
You may have to prove that it is a saturated line though.
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@coliver said:
@NetworkNerd said:
Regarding the additional connection, I remember looking into that not long ago, but the issue is we are on the hook for 3 years for the T1. I think we are about 1.5 years into it now.
It may be worth eating the cost and getting another connection in there. Even bonding it and just allowing the RemoteApp traffic to go through the new connection. Something to consider especially if productivity is being impacted as much as you described.
You may have to prove that it is a saturated line though.
Agreed.
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It's not a straight "either uses this much." It is a factor of "how it is used" and what data goes across the line. A heavily graphical application will have a lot of RDP bandwidth. And poorly written queries will have poor SQL bandwidth. You'd have to test real world usage to know the numbers.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's not a straight "either uses this much." It is a factor of "how it is used" and what data goes across the line. A heavily graphical application will have a lot of RDP bandwidth. And poorly written queries will have poor SQL bandwidth. You'd have to test real world usage to know the numbers.
Are there any great free tools out there that will give you bandwidth usage by application on your LAN?
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@NetworkNerd said:
Are there any great free tools out there that will give you bandwidth usage by application on your LAN?
Your switch should tell you a lot of that info. Mostly just the point to point numbers is all that you need.
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Human feel is a big deal too. RDP might use more or less bandwidth but the responsiveness of the app might not be easily portrayed by that number.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's not a straight "either uses this much." It is a factor of "how it is used" and what data goes across the line. A heavily graphical application will have a lot of RDP bandwidth. And poorly written queries will have poor SQL bandwidth. You'd have to test real world usage to know the numbers.
I thought all RDP bandwith was minute. This surely explains a lot.
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@technobabble said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It's not a straight "either uses this much." It is a factor of "how it is used" and what data goes across the line. A heavily graphical application will have a lot of RDP bandwidth. And poorly written queries will have poor SQL bandwidth. You'd have to test real world usage to know the numbers.
I thought all RDP bandwith was minute. This surely explains a lot.
Indeed it does. I tested Epicor via RemoteApp last night from this site, and as Scott said, there are small delays in the app (i.e. expanding folder trees is a little slower) that you would not experience if it was installed on your local machine. Though they be very small, it is noticeable to end users.
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@technobabble said:
I thought all RDP bandwith was minute. This surely explains a lot.
Varies wildly. Size of desktop, amount of graphical change, if audio is passed, if printing is passed, how often the screen changes, how much of it changes, what types of graphics are used, colour depth, full desktop versus just one application... all factors.We've seen RDP top 10Mb/s. That's many T1s. And that was for a single connection and was rate limited by being on a 10Mb/s line!
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@scottalanmiller said:
@technobabble said:
I thought all RDP bandwith was minute. This surely explains a lot.
Varies wildly. Size of desktop, amount of graphical change, if audio is passed, if printing is passed, how often the screen changes, how much of it changes, what types of graphics are used, colour depth, full desktop versus just one application... all factors.We've seen RDP top 10Mb/s. That's many T1s. And that was for a single connection and was rate limited by being on a 10Mb/s line!
That's nuts!
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@NetworkNerd all it took was someone opening YouTube or a similar website. There is no way to significantly compress already compressed video. The bandwidth that YouTube needs expands when viewed over RDP rather than being compressed further. So the amount of bandwidth needed can rapidly explode.
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@NetworkNerd said:
Regarding the additional connection, I remember looking into that not long ago, but the issue is we are on the hook for 3 years for the T1. I think we are about 1.5 years into it now.
Meh, that's OK. Like I said, something cheap on the side.
http://www.att.com/smallbusiness/internet/internet.jsp
Hell, even one of those cell devices that you pay by the month would work to prove it out. As long as it has ethernet.
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is there no option to get a faster connection? Does this site require 100% connection? Rather, can it afford to drop connection at night? (Typically, I've seen this with Comcast Business Class) ..
Everything you've said regarding the RemoteApp leads me to believe it's the graphics that are chewing it up. Is the switch in the office manageable? Can you monitor your uplink port to your ASA? Could you dangle a sniffer off of one of the other ports on the switch and look for app traffic?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@technobabble said:
I thought all RDP bandwith was minute. This surely explains a lot.
Varies wildly. Size of desktop, amount of graphical change, if audio is passed, if printing is passed, how often the screen changes, how much of it changes, what types of graphics are used, colour depth, full desktop versus just one application... all factors.We've seen RDP top 10Mb/s. That's many T1s. And that was for a single connection and was rate limited by being on a 10Mb/s line!
Well that explains the project I worked on for 2 years. The end users were using their own business class internet and we provided them the RDP icons only. So if you can't control their ISP, how would you make the system more responsive to compensate for the lag/delays that @NetworkNerd found?
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@technobabble not much that you can do. Lag is lag. How do you get more traffic down a road? You add lanes. It's the only real answer.
You can move to more efficient protocols like ICA and View. You can see how a VPN differs. You can use WAN acceleration. You can create complex cache mechanisms. But at the end of the day the answer is bandwidth, latency and reliability.
