Connectivity
Connection
Configure connections
On devices with limited processing power or where limited bandwidth is available, there’s a trade-off between performance and functionality. Users and administrators can choose an acceptable mixture of rich functionality and interactive performance. Making one or more of these changes, often on the server not the user device, can reduce the bandwidth that a connection requires and can improve performance:
- Enable SpeedScreen Latency Reduction - The SpeedScreen Latency Reduction improves performance over high latency connections. For this improvement, an instant feedback is provided to the user in response to typed data or mouse clicks. Use the SpeedScreen Latency Reduction Manager to enable this feature on the server. By default, in Citrix Workspace app, this feature is disabled for a keyboard. This feature is only enabled for the mouse on high latency connections. For more information, see the Citrix Workspace app for Linux OEM’s reference guide.
- Enable data compression - Data compression reduces the amount of data transferred across the connection. This configuration requires more processor resources to compress and decompress the data, but it can increase performance over low-bandwidth connections. Use the Citrix Audio Quality and Image Compression policy settings to enable this feature.
- Reduce the window size - Change the window size to the minimum that is comfortable. On the farm set the Session Options.
- Reduce the number of colors - Reduce the number of colors to 256. On the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops or Citrix DaaS site, set the Session Options.
- Reduce sound quality - If audio mapping is enabled, reduce the sound quality to the minimum setting using the Citrix Audio quality policy setting.
For information about troubleshooting, see Connections in the troubleshooting section.
Automatic reconnection
This topic describes the HDX Broadcast auto-client reconnection feature. Citrix recommends that you use this feature with the HDX Broadcast session reliability feature.
Users can be disconnected from their sessions because of unreliable networks, highly variable network latency, or range limitations of wireless devices. With the HDX Broadcast auto-client reconnection feature, Citrix Workspace app for Linux can detect unintended disconnections of sessions and reconnect users to the affected sessions automatically.
When this feature is enabled on the server, users do not have to reconnect manually to continue working. Citrix Workspace attempts to reconnect to the session a set number of times until there is a successful reconnection or the user cancels the reconnection attempts. If user authentication is required, a dialog box requesting credentials appears to a user during automatic reconnection. Automatic reconnection does not occur if users exit applications without logging off. Users can reconnect only to disconnected sessions.
By default, Citrix Workspace app for Linux waits 30 seconds before attempting to reconnect to a disconnected session and attempts to reconnect to that session three times.
When connecting through an AccessGateway, ACR is not available. To protect against network dropouts, ensure that Session Reliability is enabled on the server, client, and configured on the AccessGateway.
For instructions on configuring HDX Broadcast auto-client reconnection, see your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops documentation.
Session reliability
This topic describes the HDX Broadcast session reliability feature, which is enabled by default.
With HDX Broadcast session reliability, users continue to see a published application’s window if the connection to the application experiences an interruption. For example, wireless users enter in a tunnel might lose their connection when they enter the tunnel. And, regain the connection when they emerge on the other side. During the downtime, key presses and all other interactions of a user are stored. Also, the app appears frozen. When the connection is re-established, these interactions are replayed into the application.
You can now see screen changes when the session reliability begins. With this enhancement, the session window is grayed out and a countdown timer displays the time until the next reconnection attempt occurs.
Tip
You can alter the grayscale brightness used for an inactive session using the Reconnection UI transparency level policy. By default, this value is set to 80. The maximum value can’t exceed 100 (indicates a transparent window) and the minimum value can be set to 0 (a fully blacked out screen).
When a session successfully reconnects, the countdown notification message disappears. You can interact with the desktop as usual.
Starting with the 2109 version, the session reliability notification is enabled by default.
To disable this enhancement:
- Navigate to the
/opt/Citrix/ICAClient/config/module.iniconfiguration file. - In the [WFClient] section, modify the following setting:
SRNotification=False
Note:
This feature is supported only for Citrix Virtual Desktops.
When auto-client reconnection and session reliability are configured, session reliability takes precedence if there is a connection problem. Session reliability attempts to re-establish a connection to the existing session. It might take up to 25 seconds to detect a connection problem. And then takes a configurable period (the default is 180 seconds) to attempt the reconnection. If session reliability fails to reconnect, then auto-client reconnect attempts to reconnect.
If HDX Broadcast session reliability is enabled, the default port used for session communication switches from 1494 to 2598.
Citrix Workspace users cannot override the server settings.
Important:
HDX Broadcast session reliability requires that another feature, the Common Gateway Protocol, is enabled (using policy settings) on the server. Disabling the Common Gateway Protocol also disables HDX Broadcast session reliability.
Using session reliability policies
The session reliability connections policy setting enables session reliability.
The session reliability timeout policy setting has a default of 180 seconds, or three minutes. If needed, you can extend the time session reliability to keep a session open. It does not prompt you for reauthentication.
Tip
As you extend the amount of time a session is kept open, you might get distracted and walk away from your device. This situation potentially leaves the session accessible to unauthorized users.
Incoming session reliability connections use port 2598. This default port is used unless you change the port number that is defined in the session reliability port number policy setting.
For information on configuring session reliability policies, see Session reliability policy settings.
Note:
Session reliability is enabled by default at the server. To disable this feature, configure the policy managed by the server.