We are often asked how much bandwidth is used by Eclipse for planning new deployments. Here are some guidelines for estimating the network utilization of Eclipse users based on real-world data we’ve gathered from existing Eclipse customers:
- Solar customers: 3 KB/s (24 kbps) per user
- Eterm customers: 1 KB/s (8 kbps) per user
As you can see, the bandwidth requirements for Eclipse are quite low, but it’s important to take into consideration that users’ Internet usage is not limited to Eclipse, and Eclipse performance will suffer if the software has to fight for bandwidth being used for other means (i.e. streaming video and audio, file sharing, etc.). As such, we recommend prioritizing the following protocols used by Eclipse through QoS whenever possible:
- The Eterm client communicates using the telnet protocol (TCP port 23).
- The Solar client communicates using a proprietary web service protocol (TCP ports 2080 and 2443).
- The Eclipse signature capture and document imaging processes communicate over standard Microsoft file sharing protocols.
- The Eclipse printing processes communicate over standard Windows and UNIX printer ports (i.e. socket, LPD, etc.).
During the initial Solar client installation and after each Eclipse “point” upgrade, the Solar client will perform a one-time download of approximately 20 MB of data. For branches with large numbers of users, this can cause a temporary spike in bandwidth consumption when a large number of users launch the new version of Solar for the first time.
For analyzing your users’ unique usage patterns, we recommend using your network hardware’s built-in tools bandwidth utilization monitoring, or by running Wireshark on a workstation.