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« Previous day (Jul 27, 2004) | Main | Next day (Jul 28, 2004) »

SR@H (Sun Ray ™ @ Home on Broadband)

[Sun] / Permalink / 2004-07-28 09:18:22.0 / Comments [2]

That is right, all of the hype that Bill Vass speaks about when he is on stage during a keynote has flowed down the pipe far enough for me to be able to use it.

After working from home full time for the last 2+ years this is the first big change to my home working environment. A few months back a small box arrived that contained:

Sun Ray 1 Ultra-Thin Client w/ all the accesories
Cisco 800 series router
instruction sheet

Since I tend to try to setup stuff first and the read the instructions the sheet was good for reference that I did do everything correctly. It took me long to clear a space off my desk then it did to actually setup and get connected.

The setup was as simple as:

connect up the Sun Ray 1 Ultra-Thin Client to my monitor, and hookd up the power and keyboard
plug the Sun Ray ™ into the Cisco 8xx
plug the Cisco 8xx into my home broadband router
insert my Java Smartcard into the Sun Ray ™

That is it folks, with just those steps I was securly connected and authenticated to a Sun Ray ™ server inside SWAN (Sun Wide Area Network).

The new Sun Ray Server Software (need an external url if there is one) has new low bandwidth algorithms in it that make this sorta Sun Ray sessions over broadband possible. While I sit and work on the SR@H it is a fast as when I have used a Sun Ray ™ while @ a Sun office.

Currenly not available to me, but it will be as the SR@H get rolled out to the larger Sun populace, the ability to hot desk between the office and a SR@H. That means that one would be able to pull their smartcard out of their Sun Ray &trad; in the office, drive home, insert it in their SR@H when they make it home and get the exact same session back as they were using in the office.

So what advantages beside the hot desking do I see:

mobility of my session w/ security (sort sounds like a marketing line but it is true)
no more system administration for my on my home workstation, more time to work
lower home energy bills for me, instead of running a workstation I am using as much energy as a 65 watt light bulb

Next steps for me, get a Sun Ray 1g Ultra-This Client (higher screen resolution) and possiblly get hooked up w/ a Comet15 from Tadpole so that I can take my Sun Ray sessions wireless w/ a laptop form factor device... yeah working from the back deck in the sun shine, that is what I call a flexable working environment.

For what it's worth.

Other Sun blog related Sun Ray ™ posts:

Mary Mary on SR@H
Josh Simons' post on Ultra Thin and Ultra Cool
David G. Simmons' post on Sunray & WiFi

P.S. If you are a Sun employee and would like more information on this please either contact me or search for sunrayathome and you will find the link.

Update: 08.04.2004, A follow up post over in Brian's blog here
Update: 08.11.2004, A follow up post over in Jason's blog, entry SunRay Server Software 3.0 Beta

Comments [2]