User guide

Appendix D: FAQs
312
Bandwidth and KVM-over-IP Performance
How is bandwidth used in KVM-over-IP systems?
The Dominion KX II offers next generation KVM-over-IP technology – the
very best video compression available. Raritan has received numerous
technical awards confirming its high video quality transmissions and the
low bandwidth utilization.
The Dominion KX II digitizes, compresses and encrypts the keyboard,
video, and mouse signals from the target server and transmits IP packets
over the IP network to the remote client to create the remote session to
the user. The Dominion KX II provides an at-the-rack experience based
on its industry leading video processing algorithms.
Screen changes, such as video, accounts for the majority of the
bandwidth used – keyboard and mouse activity is significantly less.
It is important to note that bandwidth is only used when the user is
active. The amount of bandwidth used is based on the amount of
change to the server‟s video display screen.
If there are no changes to the video – the user is not interacting with the
server – there is generally no bandwidth used. If the user moves the
mouse or types a character, then there is a small amount of bandwidth
used. If the display is running a complex screen saver or playing a
video, then there can be a larger amount of bandwidth used.
How does bandwidth affect KVM-over-IP performance?
In general, there is a trade-off between bandwidth and performance.
The more bandwidth available, the better performance can be. In
limited bandwidth environments, performance can degrade. The
Dominion KX II has been optimized to provide strong performance in a
wide variety of environments.
What factors affect bandwidth?
There are many factors that determine how much bandwidth will be
used. The primary factor, as discussed previously, is the amount of
change in the target server‟s video display. This is dependent on the
user‟s task and actions.
Other factors include the server‟s video resolution, networking speed and
characteristics, client PC resources, and video card noise.
The Dominion KX II has very sophisticated video processing algorithms
that optimize bandwidth and performance for a variety of environments.
In addition, they are highly configurable since there are many settings to
optimize bandwidth usage. In particular, the Connection Speed setting
in the remote clients (VKC, MPC) can be set to reduce the bandwidth
used.