How do I know if my network can handle hosting Vista using RDP in your cloud? What are your network standards?

Updated: Tuesday, 27 July 2021 at 01:01PM

Author: Eric Vasbinder

IMPORTANT!

This document has network standards and specific tests for Viewpoint's RDP-based connections (VEC/RDP) and RDP Desktop (VFC) ONLY.

Users of our Vista Remote Link (VRL) connections to Vista in our cloud MUST follow the instructions and standards located HERE:

Network Standards for VRL Cloud Connections and Testing Them

IMPORTANT - VFC (Viewpoint for Cloud) and PCC (ProContractor Cloud) Customers will ALWAYS be hosted in Azure's Central US datacenter.

If your latency and packet loss results to the Central US datacenter are outside of the requirements above your environment is not supported for VFC or PCC use. If so, please reach out to Viewpoint.

THIS CAVEAT DOES NOT APPLY TO Viewpoint Enterprise Cloud (VEC) / RDP Published Apps Cloud.

VEC is available in all Viewpoint Vista cloud regions.

Vista RDP Clouds (VEC/RDP and VFC) Network Standards and Testing

Here are the requirements against which to validate:

* Test using http://www.azurespeed.com ** Test using PSPing (Windows) or TCPing / MTR (Mac OS X and Linux) ** Test using https://www.speedtest.net

Here are the steps to measure the network:

NOTE: The measurements must occur from the customer’s network; not a 4G hotspot.

1. You MUST test network performance from the customer’s network where Vista will be used.
2. If you are on a mobile device, make certain to have a tool loaded to perform this testing (e.g. “Network Analyzer Pro” on Android or iOS, WinMTR and PSPing on Windows PCs, or MTR and TCPing on Mac OS X and Linux). Please ask Viewpoint Cloud Operations for help in this case.

Latency

1. Go to https://www.azurespeed.com and click on “Latency Test” in the left menu-bar. Make sure all US regions are checked, if your company is a U.S. company. If your company is Canadian or Australian, please ensure only the regions for your country are checked.
2. Monitor the results to see which datacenter is listed as the closest to your location, and what the latency is for that region. Take a screenshot of the list of closest datacenters. See below for an example

Note: Bandwidth and latency requirements above are based upon office productivity app usage ONLY (e.g. Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, Vista, Acrobat, etc.). Viewing and listening to video and audio file or streaming audio / video services are NOT supported through our RDP cloud.

See this URL for more information: Streaming Video and Audio Over RDP Clouds (VFC, PCC, VEC) Not Supported

Packet Loss

1. Install PSPing if you are on Windows: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pstools
2. If you are on Mac OS X or Linux, install TCPing and MTR using tools like Macports or your local package manager (e.g. apt-get).
3. Open the Windows command prompt by hitting the Windows-R key combination, then typing "CMD" in to the window that comes up.
  1. NOTE: You may also open the command prompt by clicking on the Cortana search field on the bottom left of the windows task bar.
4. Then use the following command: >psping -t -4 REGIONTESTDNSNAME:443
5. Use the following Servers to Test Packet Loss to your preferred Azure Region Datacenter:

1. Stop the program after about 10 seconds by hitting Control-C
2. The results should look something like this:

The Packet loss statistic you need is in the second to the last line in the tool output.

- NOTE: this tool will also show you the most accurate view of the average latency.

- NOTE: Packet loss may be found using other tools than psping. E.g. WinMTR, mtr (mac / linux), Ping Plotter, Open Visual TraceRoute, TCPing, and others. Viewpoint Cloud Operations can help.
- (OPTIONAL) The number of network hops can also be an important performance factor. If you can, please perform a traceroute to determine the physical route that packets take through the Internet in order to reach your preferred VRL Cloud datacenter. This usually requires software like WinMTR, mtr, Ping Plotter, or Open Visual TraceRoute. Viewpoint Cloud Operations can help.

Packet Loss is the most critical of the items to test above, as with higher packet losses, RDP users will experience highly inconvenient disconnects. High latency and/or hops is also problematic as end users will then experience slow UI responsiveness.

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