During the last years so-called ``Thin Client'' architectures have become very popular. Thin Clients are simple end user devices, which are provided with content and services by powerful servers. Originally this concept was developed for Local Area Networks (LANs), which provide a high Quality of Service. If they are used in Wide Area Networks (WANs) they need to be adjusted accordingly in order to guarantee a good Quality of Experience (QoE). In this paper we investigate possibilities for configuring Citrix based Thin Client architectures to improve the QoE in WAN environments. We consider the benefits on the QoE as well as the costs on network layer.

Quality of Experience (QoE) is a measure for the satisfaction of a user with a given service. Despite the popularity of the term, there is a lack of understanding of how to capture or quantify QoE. In this paper we therefore take a step forward in this direction using the example of thin client architectures, where the client is only used as a dumb terminal while the applications run on a central server. The satisfaction of a thin client user is thus heavily influenced by the quality of the network connection between the client and the server. We study this influence by varying different network parameters like packet loss, jitter, and delay in a controlled testbed environment. The service quality is assessed using objective measurements on application level (oQoE) and verified by means of a survey among test persons capturing subjective user satisfactions (sQoE).