StifleR Client Considerations

Hardware

If the client hardware can run Windows, it can run the StifleR Client. CPU & Memory utilization is very low.

Software Requirements

Prerequisites

• Windows 10 (x64 or x86) or later

• Microsoft .NET 4.8 must be installed on the client

The client is a .NET 4.8 executable with some C++ helper DLLs. It will run on any operating system that is capable of running .NET 4.8 and BranchCache. This includes most operating systems from Windows 7 and above with the exceptions of Home and other consumer versions of Windows.

Mode of Operation

The StifleR Client can be installed in one of three modes:

1. Windows Service Based Mode (most common) - always connected to the StifleR Server, running as a Windows Service.

2. Event Triggered Mode - only starts & connects when a download job is created and running.

3. Read Only Mode - requires separate licensing. It is a limited version only for network monitoring and dashboard visibility.

Windows Service Based Mode

The benefit of Service Mode is that the Administrator can send configuration changes to the Client immediately at any time. This does not happen in the Event Triggered mode as the client is only active when a download job is run and the client will only receive configuration changes at start up.

When running as a service, the StifleR client runs as a Windows Service and monitors job creation every few seconds according to the configured interval.

Event Triggered Mode (Advanced Only)

The client is not always running in this mode lowering utilization on both client and server. This however, means that the server cannot reliably perform certain configuration tasks on the client in real time.

When the StifleR client is event driven, it is triggered by the Windows ETW (Event Tracking for Windows) system using a Scheduled Task that launches the StifleR Client on BITS Event ID 3 (BITS Job created). Once all queued BITS jobs have completed, the Client exits out.

The reason that Event Driven mode was first written into the product was to cater for a situation where a customer may deploy content during "Maintenance Windows" within set times during off-peak hours and may not want the service running outside these hours. We have not seen any requirement for this in real world usage and accordingly this mode should be considered for advanced use only.