How Citrix Works
by David Sudjiman ~ September 16th, 2008. Filed under: Tech.Taken from Getting Started With Citrix Presentation Server 4.5.
You publish any given application or content once on the server, but multiple users can simultaneously access the published resources. Application processing on the client is kept to a minimum because the application runs entirely on the server. The ICA protocol sends keystrokes, mouse clicks, and screen updates between the server and the client, so to the user of the client device it appears that the software is running locally.
Because applications run on the server and not on the client device, users can connect from any platform. For example, Microsoft Outlook running as a published application looks and feels the same whether the user is connecting from a Windows CE hand-held computer, a Macintosh desktop, or a Linux workstation. You can control user connections to the server to prevent over-consumption of licenses or server resources.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:50 am
I have to disagree with the statement ‘looks and feels the same’. Even at lan speed, applications typically have a slow response time - that dragging feeling. The ICA protocol makes up for some of this and is a definite improvement over RDP, but it’s not the same as actually running an application locally.