11,170 research outputs found

    Does "thin client" mean "energy efficient"?

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    The thick client –a personal computer with integral disk storage and local processing capability, which also has access to data and other resources via a network connection – is accepted as the model for providing computing resource in most office environments. The Further and Higher Education sector is no exception to that, and therefore most academic and administrative offices are equipped with desktop computers of this form to support users in their day to day tasks. This system structure has a number of advantages: there is a reduced reliance on network resources; users access a system appropriate to their needs, and may customise “their” system to meet their own personal requirements and working patterns. However it also has disadvantages: some are outside the scope of this project, but of most relevance to the green IT agenda is the fact that relatively complex and expensive (in first cost and in running cost) desktop systems and servers are underutilised – especially in respect of processing power. While some savings are achieved through use of “sleep” modes and similar power reducing mechanisms, in most configurations only a small portion of the overall total available processor resource is utilised. This realisation has led to the promotion of an alternative paradigm, the thin client. In a thin client system, the desktop is shorn of most of its local processing and data storage capability, and essentially acts as a terminal to the server, which now takes on responsibility for data storage and processing. The energy benefit is derived through resource sharing: the processor of the server does the work, and because that processor is shared by all users, a number of users are supported by a single system. Therefore – according to proponents of thin client – the total energy required to support a user group is reduced, since a shared physical resource is used more efficiently. These claims are widely reported: indeed there are a number of estimation tools which show these savings can be achieved; however there appears to be little or no actual measured data to confirm this. The community does not appear to have access to measured data comparing thin and thick client systems in operation in the same situation, allowing direct comparisons to be drawn. This is the main goal of this project. One specific question relates to the overall power use, while it would seem to be obvious that the thin client would require less electricity, what of the server? Two other variations are also considered: it is not uncommon for thin client deployments to continue to use their existing PCs as thin client workstations, with or without modification. Also, attempts by PC makers to reduce the power requirements of their products have given rise to a further variation: the incorporation of low power features in otherwise standard PC technology, working as thick clients. This project was devised to conduct actual measurements in use in a typical university environment. We identified a test area: a mixed administrative and academic office location which supported a range of users, and we made a direct replacement of the current thick client systems with thin client equivalents; in addition, we exchanged a number of PCs operating in thin and thick client mode with devices specifically branded as “low power” PCs and measured their power requirements in both thin and thick modes. We measured the energy consumption at each desktop for the duration of our experiments, and also measured the energy draw of the server designated to supporting the thin client setup, giving us the opportunity to determine the power per user of each technology. Our results show a significant difference in power use between the various candidate technologies, and that a configuration of low power PC in thick client mode returned the lowest power use during our study. We were also aware of other factors surrounding a change such as this: we have addressed the technical issues of implementation and management, and the non-technical or human factors of acceptance and use: all are reported within this document. Finally, our project is necessarily limited to a set of experiments carried out in a particular situation, therefore we use estimation methods to draw wider conclusions and make general observations which should allow others to select appropriate thick or thin client solutions in their situation

    cISP: A Speed-of-Light Internet Service Provider

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    Low latency is a requirement for a variety of interactive network applications. The Internet, however, is not optimized for latency. We thus explore the design of cost-effective wide-area networks that move data over paths very close to great-circle paths, at speeds very close to the speed of light in vacuum. Our cISP design augments the Internet's fiber with free-space wireless connectivity. cISP addresses the fundamental challenge of simultaneously providing low latency and scalable bandwidth, while accounting for numerous practical factors ranging from transmission tower availability to packet queuing. We show that instantiations of cISP across the contiguous United States and Europe would achieve mean latencies within 5% of that achievable using great-circle paths at the speed of light, over medium and long distances. Further, we estimate that the economic value from such networks would substantially exceed their expense

    TechNews digests: Jan - Nov 2005

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    TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

    Seamless mobility with personal servers

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    We describe the concept and the taxonomy of personal servers, and their implications in seamless mobility. Personal servers could offer electronic services independently of network availability or quality, provide a greater flexibility in the choice of user access device, and support the key concept of continuous user experience. We describe the organization of mobile and remote personal servers, define three relevant communication modes, and discuss means for users to exploit seamless services on the personal server

    TechNews digests: Jan - Mar 2010

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    TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

    Evaluation of a Spyware Detection System Using Thin Client Computing

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    In previous work, we introduced a bait injection system designed to delude and detect crimeware by forcing it to reveal itself during the exploitation of monitored information. Although effective as a technique, our original system was practically limited, as it was implemented in a personal VM environment. In this paper, we extend our system by applying it to thin-clien to demonstrate how the approach can be used in a large-scale deployment. Adapting our system to such an environment revealed a number of challenging issues, such as scalability, portability, and choice of physical communication means. We provide implementation details, as well as experimental results that demonstrate the scalability and effectiveness of our system

    Discriminating weight of Cloud Environment in ERP selection assessment

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    Selection of an ERP, based on its incorporated component parameters, is a significant problem for an industry. A more comprehensive structure of an ERP is a three tier ERP. A cloud database is a cloud computing service. Database has scalability, and makes underlying virtual machine instances to run a database on such virtual machines. Cloud databases which are relational as opposed to non relational or No SQL databases, imply that SQL databases can run in the cloud with a virtual machine or as a service. Cloud computing architecture is a set of components and subcomponents required for cloud computing. A front end platform set like fat client, thin client, mobile device, Back end platforms like servers, storage, a cloud based delivery, A network such as internet, intranet, Inter cloud connectivity setup are a combined blend that together make a Cloud framework. The paper aims to discriminate availing an ERP in Cloud or Non Cloud framework mode and analyzing pros and cons in both modes
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