Configure beacon points
Use the Manage Beacons task to specify URLs inside and outside your internal network to be used as beacon points. Citrix Receiver attempts to contact beacon points and uses the responses to determine whether users are connected to local or public networks. When a user accesses a desktop or application, the location information is passed to the server providing the resource so that appropriate connection details can be returned to Citrix Receiver. This ensures that users are not prompted to log on again when they access a desktop or application.
For example, if the internal beacon point is accessible, this indicates that the user is connected to the local network. However, if Citrix Receiver cannot contact the internal beacon point and receives responses from both the external beacon points, this means that the user has an Internet connection but is outside the corporate network. Therefore, the user must connect to desktops and applications though NetScaler Gateway. When the user accesses a desktop or application, the server providing the resource is notified to provide details of the NetScaler Gateway appliance through which the connection must be routed. This means that the user does not need to log on to the appliance when accessing the desktop or application.
By default, StoreFront uses the server URL or load-balanced URL of your deployment as the internal beacon point. The Citrix website and the virtual server or user logon point (for Access Gateway 5.0) URL of the first NetScaler Gateway deployment you add are used as external beacon points by default.
If you change any beacon points, ensure that users update Citrix Receiver with the modified beacon information. Where a Receiver for Web site is configured for a store, users can obtain an updated Citrix Receiver provisioning file from the site. Otherwise, you can export a provisioning file for the store and make this file available to your users.
Important: In multiple server deployments, use only one server at a time to make changes to the configuration of the server group. Ensure that the Citrix StoreFront management console is not running on any of the other servers in the deployment. Once complete, propagate your configuration changes to the server group so that the other servers in the deployment are updated.
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On the Windows Start screen or Apps screen, locate and click the Citrix StoreFront tile.
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Select the Stores node in the left pane of the Citrix StoreFront management console and, in the Actions pane, click Manage Beacons.
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Specify the URL to use as the internal beacon point.
- To use the server URL or load-balanced URL of your StoreFront deployment, select Use the service URL.
- To use an alternative URL, select Specify beacon address and enter a highly available URL within your internal network.
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Click Add to enter the URL of an external beacon point. To modify a beacon point, select the URL in the External beacons list and click Edit. Select a URL in the list and click Remove to stop using that address as a beacon point.
You must specify at least two highly available external beacon points that can be resolved from public networks. The beacon URLs should be fully qualified domain names (
http://example.com) and not the abbreviated NetBIOS name (http://example). This enables Citrix Receiver to determine whether users are located behind an Internet paywall, such as in a hotel or Internet café. In such cases, all the external beacon points connect to the same proxy.