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With the introduction of Windows NT, Terminal Server Edition (TSE),
Microsoft finally brings to Windows the ``thin-client'' computing
model the X Window System has offered Unix for a decade. TSE's two
most salient features are the provision of multi-user login service
and the provision of that service remotely, over a network link.
These features distinguish TSE from previous Microsoft operating
systems not only by functionality, but also by how its performance
ought to be measured. Because TSE's primary service is interactive,
user-perceived latency is more important than ever. In this paper,
we examine the resource consumption and latency characteristics of
shared usage on a TSE system. We find that the introduction of
remote, multi-user access has added to the minimal level of resource
consumption, that the efficiency of TSE's RDP protocol is generally
good but degrades on dynamic user interface elements, and that TSE
can exhibit poor latency performance when subjected to high processor,
memory, and network load.
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