Re: Terminal Server 2003 via VPN - poor performance; why?

Dr Him wrote:

> We've got two sites, our main site in Madison, WI, and another in
> Edinburgh, Scotland. They are linked together with a site-to-site VPN.
> The Internet connection is a full T1 (1.5mbit) in Madison and an E1
> (2mbit) in Edinburgh.

And I have an ISP which gets me a 4MBps internet connection for less than 30 pounds/month. 2mbps is not that much...
>
> We've got an Oracle Applications (11i) server running in Madison.
> Because the connectivity between the sites is limited, we installed a
> Windows 2003 Terminal Server in Madison to provide a faster user
> experience for Edinburgh users.
>
> Initially it seemed fine. However, upon actually having to use Oracle
> Apps across the pond, the users started complaining of horrible
> performance. Some times of the day it is fine (towards the end of the
> workday in Edinburgh), but much of the time it is pretty abysmal,
> taking a very long time even click a button (as for UI feedback, it's
> got to redraw to show the button being clicked).

Plus all these darn 'when_mouse_' events, that need to be evaluated...
>
> Looking at the latency, it's pretty steady throughout the day at just
> under 200ms, which isn't great, but it's not *that* bad:
>
> http://johnstewart.com/ACP/edinbdc-3h.png
> http://johnstewart.com/ACP/edinbdc-30h.png
> http://johnstewart.com/ACP/edinbdc-10d.png
>
> And figuring throughput would be the problem, I used TTCP
> (http://www.pcausa.com/Utilities/ttcpdown1.htm) to try and gather
> throughput stats. I did a throughput test every 5 minutes, and it
> generally is pretty good, at 35-40 kBps, which is 280-320kbps, still
> pretty awesome compared to a modem (upon which Terminal Server should
> work relatively well):
>
> http://johnstewart.com/ACP/throughput.jpg
>
> I personally use the terminal server all the time, and it always works
> fine for me in any application. I do normally use it via decent links
> (DSL, usually), however. But there are rarely any users on it, so load
> is not an issue at all as far as resources on the TS box itself.
>
> I'm not seeing anything obvious pointing me towards a possible
> problem.
>
> As far as tuning the actual application, our Oracle folks are saying
> that there is not much that can be done to the client (to stop
> unnecessary redraws, for example).
>
> Shouldn't our bandwidth and latency levels be adequate?
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions on how to track down the problem?
>
> thanks
>
> johnS

Not knowing Terminal Server, you would need to see how much data is pushed to and fro per user session.
Compare the response times to those you get processing *the exact same data* in Madison to those in Edinburgh.

You will probably see that Oracle Apps is not performing; I have witnessed sales entry persons crying with frustration over the "improved" (25 minutes processing for 1 order) application vs the old one (under 1 minute, inclusive stock checks).
If so, haunt the oracle folks until the application has the correct indexing, etc. A lot of assumptions were made, when Apps was built, and they "may not reflect your business".

Good luck!

-- 

Regards,
Frank van Bortel