Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards TECHNICAL NOTES
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards Table of Contents Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Additional Support. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1 PCoIP Configuration Tools. . . . .
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards Preface This document provides guidelines for configuring, troubleshooting, and optimizing 1:1 (non-virtualized) remote computing using PCoIP host cards and PCoIP zero clients.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards 1 PCoIP Configuration Tools Several of the recommendations in this guide, such as configuring PCoIP bandwidth utilization and image quality, determining IP addresses, assigning connections, and updating PCoIP firmware, are accomplished via the PCoIP Web interface, zero client onscreen display (OSD) and/or Management Console. These tools are introduced below. 1.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards 1.2 Zero Client Onscreen Display (OSD) Every PCoIP zero client (including PCoIP integrated monitors) provides an onscreen display (OSD) that allows you to view or modify certain PCoIP zero client configuration and network settings. To access the client OSD, disconnect the client from its PCoIP session (or power it on) and use the mouse to access the Options menu at the top left of the Connect screen. Note that PCoIP host cards have no OSD equivalent.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards 1.3 PCoIP Management Console For managing larger deployments of PCoIP host cards and/or clients, Teradici offers the PCoIP Management Console. This is a Web-based tool that allows administrators to: • View and update device configuration • Update firmware • Group devices (e.g.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards 2 Firmware • The latest Tera1 firmware (version 3.1 or later) is recommended unless you are connecting to a Linux host over a high-latency WAN (see below). Firmware 3.1 or later is compatible with both VMware and non-VMware environments. • All PCoIP devices in VMware-brokered environments require firmware 3.1 or later and VMware View agent 4.0.1 or later.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards Figure 4: PCoIP host card Web interface showing bandwidth configuration screen Note: In order to minimize the impact of new remote sessions on the network, the PCoIP protocol initiates sessions at reduced bandwidth and increases bandwidth utilization over the first few seconds. For this reason, you may briefly see low-bandwidth video artifacts in a new session until bandwidth utilization ramps up. 3.1.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards Setting the Device Bandwidth Target is the preferred method for managing bandwidth utilization on a shared network because it still allows individual remote sessions to exploit all available bandwidth when the network is not congested. In contrast, the Device Bandwidth Limit (described in Section 3.1.3) is a hard limit on bandwidth utilization that will restrict the user experience even if no other traffic is on the network. 3.1.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards If you must limit bandwidth utilization on your network, use the Device Bandwidth Target setting first before adjusting the Device Bandwidth Limit. Get input from your users as you adjust these settings to find the bandwidth limit at which users are satisfied with their desktop experience. 3.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards Note: Minimum Image Quality can also be configured using the OSD via User Settings Image tab as shown below. Figure 6: Minimum Image Quality setting under User Settings Image in zero client OSD 3.2.2 Maximum Initial Image Quality The Maximum Initial Image Quality slider can be used to reduce network bandwidth peaks caused by significant screen changes.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards 3.4 Packet Loss Typical symptoms of packet loss include sluggish desktop responsiveness and blurry images. Packet loss can affect both the user experience and USB connectivity even if the base latency and bandwidth meet PCoIP protocol requirements. Packet loss below 0.1% should not have a noticeable impact on user experience or USB connectivity. While network packet loss is usually specified as a percentage (e.g., 0.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards When auto-discovery is enabled and you click the Connect button on the client, the client displays only the first five host cards that it finds. These may change on subsequent connection attempts if there are more than five host cards on the subnet.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards Figure 9: Disabling auto-discovery in the Configuration Discovery tab of the zero client OSD Figure 10: Configuring the host IP and MAC addresses in the Configuration Session tab of the zero client OSD TECHNICAL NOTES / 14
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards 3.7 Temporal Dithering Temporal dithering is a technique employed by some graphics cards to simulate colors that they cannot natively display by rapidly changing the colors of pixels, tricking the eye into seeing “in-between” colors. During PCoIP remote sessions, temporal dithering can cause extremely high bandwidth utilization because the rapidly changing pixels force the PCoIP protocol to constantly deliver large screen updates to the remote desktop.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards Figure 11: Client IP address on OSD Network tab Figure 12: Host IP address on OSD Session tab (if client is statically paired to the host) • If the host and client are on the same subnet containing a small number of PCoIP devices and host discovery is enabled, click the client Connect button. The auto-discovery function will locate host cards.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards • To find the IP address of a zero client, navigate to “pcoip-portal -” in a Web browser where is the MAC address of the client with all hyphens and spaces removed (e.g., for zero client MAC address 00-1C-B3-BF-22-45, use “pcoip-portal-001CB3BF2245”). This will open the zero client Web interface.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards 5 Connection Problems If the Connect button on the client onscreen display (OSD) is inactive or if the client cannot discover any host cards on the IP network, check the network connection and confirm the Ethernet switch or router is on. Under Options Diagnostics on the client OSD, you can ping a known IP address to check for reachability (see Figure 14). Ensure that your firewall is not blocking PCoIP traffic.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards 6.2 Client Does Not Display Desktop – “Source Signal on Other Port” When using the client with a single monitor (or with a single PCoIP integrated monitor), it is possible for the video signal to be sent to the video output with no monitor.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards To enable audio, open the host card Web interface, enable audio under Permissions Audio and restart the host. When using 64-bit Windows Vista or Windows 7 on the host PC, also enable 64-bit on the same configuration page. Do the same for the client. Ensure the audio connectors are properly connected. 8 WAN Support 8.
Using PCoIP® Zero Clients with PCoIP Host Cards 9 Frequently Asked Questions Why is my PCoIP session using >100 Mbps almost all of the time? This is typically caused because temporal dithering is enabled on your graphics card. See Section 3.7 for more details. Why is my PCoIP session performing poorly when my network is not busy? This problem is typically caused by persistent packet loss or significant packet reordering. See sections 3.4 and 3.5 for details and how to resolve these issues.
