Situated near Manchester in the Northwest of England, Bolton Institute has 7,000 students and more than 850 staff. It runs a wide range of first degree and postgraduate courses including psychology, visual arts, textile management and electronic engineering.

The Challenge: Faster Access to UNIX-based CAD Applications

In collaboration with the University of Northumbria, Bolton Institute delivers an MSc course in microelectronics through Internet-based learning. The development of the course was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for the UK, with students worldwide benefiting from Bolton Institute’s expertise. Four years ago, when development work started, it was decided that in addition to the courseware being accessed across the Internet, the UNIX-based CAD applications required for the course should also be available remotely.

Tests revealed early on, however, that the traditional client/server system that worked well over an internal network became too slow to be usable over the Internet. The large number of handshaking interactions resulted in significant delays, because each one was affected by the latency of the connection. Even after improvements had been made, students found the situation frustrating and limiting, as it could take minutes to load and configure an application, and the response to mouse movements was slow.

Moreover, if the communications link was broken for even a short time, design work up to that point was likely to be lost. The Institute needed to deliver fast, robust and reliable access to CAD applications. To achieve this over the Internet required that the application processes should run on the server in entirety and the flow of traffic be predominantly one-way.

Implementing Citrix Presentation Server for the Solaris Operating Environment

Bolton Institute was keen to acquire Citrix® Presentation Server for the Solaris Operating Environment, having seen the benefits that the Presentation Server for Windows® version could bring to organisations. The Institute worked closely with Esteem, a Platinum-level member of the Citrix Solutions Network™, to implement an application server computing solution based on Presentation Server for Solaris. Now students can log on to a Presentation Server session using a standard 56k dial-up connection to access Cadence or Altera, the CAD electronics applications, from their homes. This includes students in geographically diverse locations, such as Canada and Hong Kong, as well as pupils from all over the UK.

Cost-Savings and Improved Performance

“Citrix Presentation Server for Solaris is the reason we can continue to offer this course on a remote learning basis,” commented Jeff Ormerod, Course Leader. “Previously, for reliability, we supplied students with high-end PCs and ISDN lines, but this was putting a serious financial strain on the course - even though students made a contribution towards the cost. Having implemented Citrix Presentation Server for Solaris, we can be certain that students will be able to study all parts of the course successfully using their own equipment, whether they use a basic PC, Mac®, UNIX workstation or laptop. The client software downloads quickly and all the students have found it straightforward to install.”

“Many students have commented about the dramatic improvement in performance since moving to Citrix,” said Ormerod. “In fact, we estimate that application performance has improved almost tenfold. Presentation Server for Solaris shifts all application processing to the server, with only mouse clicks and screen updates travelling the network. The delays associated with handshaking have been removed, and the application is available within seconds. This faster application performance, combined with the ability for students to use their own hardware and dial-up connection, will enable us to greatly extend this course. We expect to take on more students every four months and offer access to students all around the world - a possibility that we couldn’t have seriously considered before. Courses now have the potential to take off dramatically and we have seen tremendous interest. Bolton Institute and University of Northumbria have enhanced their international reputations as a result.”

With relatively few IT staff responsible for the system, the new IT solution needed to be manageable and reliable. “Citrix Presentation Server for Solaris has been very straightforward to implement and maintain,” comments Ormerod. “The applications reside on the server so all administration can take place centrally.”

Future Plans

“The Citrix Presentation Server for Solaris computing solution has proved such an effective way to utilise our teaching resources that we are considering using it to expand the reach of other engineering courses we offer,” explains Ormerod. “The implementation has given us a fast, flexible and reliable infrastructure to organise our teaching effectively.”

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