ICA-HDX or RDP: Which is best across the WAN?

Thursday, 11 February 2010 11:51.
Written by Barry Viles

I have recently had some contrasting views from customers and equipment vendors on the merits of Citrix ICA-HDX (High Definition Experience) and RDP. My client has been testing some well known accounting application packages across the WAN using both Citrix and RDP7, with mixed performance results ..........enter left the WAN Acceleration discussion.

But could ICA-HDX be the answer, with its adaptive orchestration capabilities, Branch Repeater caching and WAN performance optimisation features such as TCP flow control, session reliability, multi-level compression and bandwidth estimation and control?

On a different plane, there appears to be some concern that the ICA-HDX solution with Branch Repeater will ‘lock-in’ the WAN performance solution to the Citrix server solution, by in effect ‘locking-out’ the ability of third party WAN Acceleration vendors to manipulate the performance of the Citrix data and hence decouple the WAN solution and server solution. This could potentially mean if a customer decides to move to Microsoft and RDP, then a redesign of the WAN is also required – not good!

So clients are facing the dilemma of not only which is the best client-server solution for their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and business applications, but also the best WAN performance solution with strategic implications riding on the final server decision.

Of course life is not as black and white as this and there will always be overriding circumstances that may well influence the outcome but I would be interested to get views from others on this position – vendors and users, performance merits and WAN implications – all welcome.

Comments (2)

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And to throw another curve ball in the mix, what about PCoIP?

written by Phil Richardson, on 11 March 2010

I recommend you look at Ericom Blaze, a software-based RDP acceleration AND compression product that provides a superior end-user experience over WAN and congested LANs. Besides delivering higher frame rates and reducing screen freezes and choppiness, Ericom Blaze accelerates RDP 7 performance by up to 2-5 times (and up to 10-25 times for earlier versions of RDP), while significantly reducing network bandwidth consumption over low-bandwidth/high latency connections.

You can read more about Blaze at:
http://www.ericom.com/ericom_blaze.asp?URL_ID=708

Or view a video demo at:
http://www.ericom.com/blaze_youtube.asp?URL_ID=708

Hope this helps.
Adam

written by Adam, on 24 February 2010

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ICA-HDX or RDP: Which is best across the WAN?