Impact of Network Quality Deterioration on User’s Perceived Operability and Live-Migration of Virtual Machines in Remote Desktop Environments

Abstract

The remote desktop environment (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is attracting interest as a way to strengthen security and support mobile access or telework. To realize the remote desktop environments, a remote desktop protocol is required to transfer information via a network about the user’s operations made on the keyboard and mouse on a terminal to the remote server. The growing popularity of remote desktop environments makes it important to determine the factors that govern the user’s perceived operability with a remote desktop protocol. It is also necessary important to find out the conditions for a wide-area live migration of virtual machines, to use resources efficiently in the remote desktop environments. This paper examines the impact of network quality deterioration (long network delay, high packet loss, small downlink bandwidth) on a user’s perceived operability in remote desktop environments, assuming RDP, PCoIP and ICA as remote desktop protocol. Next, this paper studies the impact of network quality on the performance of a live-migration of virtual machines in remote desktop environments.