Selecting the appropriate client

The types of Host On-Demand clients that you use depend on your computing environment and your personal preferences.

Cached clients and Web Start clients are stored locally and load faster than download clients (unless an updated version of the client is being downloaded from the Web server). You can use them equally well over network and dial-up connections. Cached clients and Web Start clients take up more local disk space than download clients, but on most machines this is not a problem.

The Web Start client allows users to run Host On-Demand sessions without a browser. Users start Host On-Demand sessions from the Java Web Start Application Manager. If a user closes the Host On-Demand desktop and there are active sessions running, the user is prompted to make sure he wants to close all sessions.

Download clients are generally used in LAN-connected environments because high-speed network connections reduce the time it takes to download them from the Web server. They are not recommended for use over low-speed dialup connections because they need to be downloaded every time they are used, which takes more time on dialup connections. The small disk footprint of download clients is especially well-suited for client machines that do not have a lot of local disk space, such as NetStation machines.

You can use cached, Web Start, and download clients in the same Host On-Demand environment. Refer to Removing the cached client for instructions on removing cached clients.

If you plan to use the Web Start client, you need to use the Deployment Wizard to generate your HTML file. If you plan to use cached clients or download clients, IBM recommends that you create your own clients using the Deployment Wizard instead of using one of the predefined clients. Refer to Reducing client download size for more information.