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F E A T U R E

Web-enabled Thin Client Applications

February 19, 2001
By Mark A. Seltzer

Thin-client technology was designed to make the IT administrator's job easier. With the arrival of thin clients, administrators no longer had to install a product update or a service release on a client desktop; they could use thin technology to connect to a remote server and run all applications from a single point. But for a while, the technology had one major flaw: It required the installation of a software product on the desktop. Now, new Web-based thin technology promises to solve this problem.

Thin-client technology lets companies serve applications to graphical terminals in a manner similar to that used with legacy mainframe technology. Thin clients resemble today's client/server systems but actually function as time-sharing clients on which applications are remotely displayed. Thin-client technology has been very helpful for corporations that want an easy maintenance and a relatively low total cost of ownership. Because all screen data is sent over the network wire via specialized display protocols, however, thin clients have noticeable refresh delays while using graphic-intensive applications. As a result, thin clients may not be well-suited for all organizations.

Unlike conventional thin clients, the software products we looked at are Web browser-based. Rather than requiring a specialized client to be installed, they use either a Java applet, in which classes are installed on demand, or a Netscape Navigator or ActiveX browser plug-in, which is used to make the thin-client connection. The purpose of these products is to ensure that no additional software need be installed by the end user. The system administrator's job is made easier since he or she does not need to maintain and update a locally installed client application on employees' workstations.

Online-only

In addition to the four products tested here, we also took a look at the beta release of GraphOn Corp.'s GraphOn Bridges for Unix and Linux.

While testing these Web browser-based thin-client packages, we tried to determine how thin they really are. All thin clients use some black magic to work, whether it is installing an ActiveX object or a Java class, so these applications are actually installing software or libraries on your computer.

We saw remarkable similarity between a vendor's Windows-based clients and Web-based clients. The reason: Both the Web and the native clients use the same or similar libraries. They simply install components on demand. This makes the system administrator's job easier, but sometimes as much as a few megabytes of software must be installed on the local machine, undermining some of what makes Web-based thin-client computing so attractive.

More than a half-dozen products allow for Microsoft Windows and Unix thin-client Web access. After examining four of these products, we gave Citrix Systems' Citrix NFuse 1.5 our Editor's Choice award. It performed well in our tests and provides the greatest number of key features. Both Hob's HobLink JWT and Microsoft Corp.'s Microsoft Windows 2000 Terminal Services Advanced Client (TSAC) made credible showings, but neither could match the scalability and integration of Citrix NFuse or Tarantella Enterprise 3.

Menta Software declined our invitation to participate, as its WinToNet was still in early beta.