New Duo Keeps WinFrame Alive

By Jonathan Feldman  WinFrame is dead. Long live WinFrame? Until the advent of Microsoft Corp.'s Terminal Server, Citrix Systems' WinFrame was arguably the best of breed in thin-client computing and the only game in town for 32-bit Windows emulation. Now a licensing agreement between Citrix and Microsoft has changed that. Vital parts and organs from the Windows NT 3.51-based WinFrame product have been transplanted into Windows NT 4.0 and then divided into separate products: Microsoft's Terminal Server (coded-named Hydra) and Citrix's pICAsso. However, Microsoft's offering does not provide backward compatibility for WinFramers. And instead of supporting the Citrix ICA (Independent Computing Architecture) protocol, Microsoft has created its own protocol, RDP (Remote Disp lay Protocol), formerly known as T.Share. (For more information on this protocol, see www.microsoft.com/ntserver/guide/hydratop10.asp.) I tested both beta products, measuring protocol bandwidth and comparing features. The bottom line: Although Microsoft's Terminal Server works well as a standalone product, you'll want to purchase both Terminal Server and pICAsso to reap the benefits of WinFrame in a Windows NT 4.0 environment. Brave New World Terminal Server takes multiuser Windows technology past NT 3.51 and into the NT 4.0 world. In addition to giving users the now-familiar Windows95-style user interface, Terminal Server also supports other key Windows NT 4.0 features. Users who run applications that rely on modern registry structures and newer shared libraries, such as the Windows Messaging API (MAPI32), can use these applications under Terminal Server. However, the product has a long way to go before enterprise technology managers will go out and buy it on its own merits. To paraph rase Henry Ford, you can have the Microsoft client in any configuration as long as it's TCP/IP under Windows. Terminal Server's lack of support for multiple protocols and non-Windows platforms make it little more than a novelty, at least until manufacturers release Terminal Server-based terminals. It's difficult to get a firm ship date for these terminals. One manufacturer I spoke with said that Microsoft hadn't released RDP specs to them, probably because RDP is still being improved and may change significantly before the final release. A Microsoft spokesman confirmed that terminal-based RDP specs were in progress. In the near term, ICA terminals are plentiful, available and debugged; pICAsso lets these terminals interface with Terminal Server, as well as older DOS, Unix and Apple Macintosh-based WinFrame Clients. It Lives I easily installed the first beta of Terminal Server 4.0 on a Pentium server with 32 MB of RAM. In the lab, I tested with a Wyse Technology Winterm 2700SE terminal. I real ized that I would have to install Citrix's pICAsso in order to make the terminal work. The Wyse terminal has Citrix ICA code onboard, not Microsoft's RDP, as do our enterprise network's Neoware Systems @workStations. To test Terminal Server on its own, I installed the Microsoft terminal client on a Windows NT Workstation PC. I used the client to log on, install a couple of applications and log out. Relatively familiar with the WinFrame client, I looked for configuration options, such as predefined user/login/application fields and keyboard remapping, but did not find them. Terminal Server only offers two client options to choose from: screen resolution (640x480 versus 800x600) and server name.

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