UI Features Tab - WAN Experience¶

The WAN Experience local cursor and keyboard features may be useful in WAN deployments where network latency exceeds 40-60 ms. In these environments, users may notice a visible lag between the movement of the mouse and the movement of the cursor. Key presses may be dropped or falsely repeated key presses may occur under very high network latency scenarios. Both of these side effects of high-network latency hinder user experience. The local cursor and keyboard features help lessen latency effects.

Latency effects are noticed differently by users. With network latency less than 40 ms, most users notice the local cursor overlay and desktop cursor moving in tandem. With higher network latencies, the local cursor overlay moves according to the user’s movements, and the desktop cursor follows with visible lag. Because the overlay provides instantaneous feedback, the user can move the mouse freely without having to wait for the desktop cursor to catch up.

• Enable Local Cursor and Keyboard: The local cursor is enabled when this option is selected and the mouse device’s movements are recorded at the client. The movement is reflected via the local cursor overlay in real time. The movements and mouse clicks are sent to the PCoIP host and then to a driver via the exposed PCoIP Host Function PCI device and device drivers. When the driver receives the movement information, the cursor on the workstation is updated.

The local keyboard feature works on a similar concept. The client captures and records keyboard key presses, and then sends them to the PCoIP host. This feature prevents key presses from being dropped. The local keyboard feature does not display an overlay for the typed text, and the text that appears on the screen is affected by the network latency.

• Visible Cursor(s): The available options are:

  • Remote: Cursor shape drawn by the host workstation. When the Remote: Visible cursor is selected, you cannot select Hide the Local Cursor when idle.
  • Local: Cursor shape drawn by the client. When the Local visible cursor option is selected, the remote cursor is hidden. The local cursor overlay icon appears as an arrow with an L in it when the local cursor is visible and the Remote Workstation Card Software cannot display the correct host workstation drawn cursor. For details including information on problems that may occur when hiding the remote cursor, see Known Issues When Hiding the Remote Cursor. Local and Remote: Both the local and the remote workstation cursors are viewable.

• Local Cursor speed: Sets the speed of the local cursor overlay. The local cursor speed setting is separate from the mouse speed in Linux.

  Note

  You can also configure the Zero Client cursor speed using the PCoIP On Screen Display (OSD). See your version of the PCoIP® Zero Client Firmware Administrators Guide.

• Hide the Local Cursor when idle: Select this option to set the local cursor overlay to disappear after one second of idle mouse movement. Uncheck this box to always display the local cursor overlay.

  Note

  The PCoIP Remote Workstation Card Software stores separate copies of the WAN Experience configuration settings for each client a user connects to a host from. This lets users enable the feature on certain clients and disable it on other clients. This is useful when a user connects to a host from a client at work over a LAN connection and another client at home over a WAN connection. In this scenario the user might disable the Local Cursor and Keyboard feature for the work client and enable the feature for the home client.

• Enable Local Tablet Driver: The local tablet driver is enabled when this option is selected and the tablet device’s movements are recorded at the client. The movement is reflected via the local cursor overlay in real time. All data received from the tablet is sent to a tablet driver running on the host workstation.

  Note

  The Enable Local Tablet Driver option may be grayed out if not supported. Local Tablet Driver describes why the feature may be disabled.

• Enable Client Keyboard Repeat Detection: Select this option for the client to perform keyboard repeat detection. Uncheck this box for the host OS to perform keyboard repeat detection.

  Note

  Enable this feature if the latency of the connection exceeds ~150 ms. When this feature is disabled, the host OS performs keyboard repeat detection. The host OS may incorrectly report repeated keys for high-latency connections.

  • Repeat delay: Set the length of time that elapses before a character begins to repeat when you hold down a key. This setting is only used when the client performs keyboard repeat detection.

• Repeat rate: Set the speed at which a character repeats when you hold down a key. This setting is only used when the client performs keyboard repeat detection.

  Note

  You can also configure the Zero Client Repeat delay and Repeat rate using the OSD. See your version of the PCoIP® Zero Client Firmware Administrators Guide.