Thanks for the feedback Jerry. I'll pass this on to the folks in marketing.
Jerry Callison wrote:
>Would pay for a soft client?
The short answer is, yes, I would pay for a soft client. Of course, the
value proposition has to play out well. Soft Ray competes against VNC
(free), NoMachine (cheap), and other X Server products. I would not pay
a Sun Ray price for a Soft Ray client. Sun would have two marketable
advantages over these other offerings: single admin for Sun Rays and
Soft Rays and professional/commercial support.
>If Sun Ray changed it's licensing that it was per connection (i.e.
like Citrix), how would you feel about that?
Actually I am still a little miffed about a Sun Ray client license fee
at all. Would you pay Texas Instruments for a fancy graphing calculator
and then pay an additional surcharge to actually use it?!? "Never ask
your customers to do something that you wouldn't." (Guy Kawasaki,
_Rules_for_Revolutionaries_) Charge the Sun Ray server license per CPU
and skip both user and connection licensing. Make it easier on all of
us. :^)
-jerry
Craig Bender wrote:
That's awesome!
I hear you on the softclient. I'm in your camp. I always try. Two
questions though (being serious here):
Would pay for a soft client?
If Sun Ray changed it's licensing that it was per connection (i.e.
like Citrix), how would you feel about that?
Jerry Callison wrote:
Count it more than theory. I have put an open source Linux (OpenWRT)
on an inexpensive Linksys device and used it to configure several Sun
Rays for use over a DSL link. It's a little tricky to setup (at one
point, I had to "debrick" the router!), but it works well once
configured. The Linksys runs dnsmasq which supports the DHCP options
needed by the Sun Rays:
# dnsmasq.conf
# Increase the default time-to-live; see
http://www.cse.nd.edu/~striegel/HowTo/WANRay.html
dhcp-option=23,25
# X windows server
dhcp-option=49,<ip_address>
# TFTP server
dhcp-option=66,<ip_address>
Even with this setup working, however, I am still a big advocate for
having the ability to configure these settings in firmware. DHCP
configuration is a great solution for many situations, but fails
miserably when you do not own or control the network in which the Sun
Ray clients are deployed.
Regarding a Soft Ray... almost every potential customer I have talked
to has inquired about this feature. A Soft Ray introduces many
issues (e.g., protecting the client OS) and should not be necessary
in the long run. But for where the market is today, a Soft Ray would
be a fabulous transitional step.
-jerry
Craig Bender wrote:
WRT the VPN, it all depends on what your security requirements are.
Some customers are happy with the RC4.
I know the Linksys firmware is open sources. In theory it could he
made to provide the minimum information the SR needs to boot, which
would be to use option 49.
In the future we hope to offer you a way to set this via the
firmware. If you've ever seen a Tadpole Sun Ray, it would be like that.
Derek Konigsberg wrote:
http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0204/817-5490.pdf
http://www.sun.com/sunray/docs/SunRay_atHome033105.pdf
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/ThinGuy?entry=the_importance_of_mtu
In other words...
"We provide users with an expensive Cisco so-ho VPN router, which
establishes a VPN-style link to our network, and serves the right
DHCP parameters to the Sun Ray"
(which makes me wonder if there is an equally portable cheaper
option for those of us that got cheap SunRays off eBay and want
tinker-setups to take on-the-go, without having to build a whole
mini-PC running OpenBSD/Linux/etc. and the relevant VPN/DHCP software)
-Derek
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