Networking Guide

This article discusses Network Addressing requirements, which ensures that clients are uniquely identifiable across the network, as well as Firewall rules that enable traffic for defined services.

Network Addressing

A DHCP server helps assign a lease to new clients. When the DHCP server is unable to assign the lease, the following method describes how to assign a lease to each client.

uClient Adapter Configure network settings for a uClient device using included peripherals.

Zero-Client Adapter Zero-Client Adapter cannot be managed locally. If it doesn't get a response to its DHCP request within a certain time frame, it assigns itself the 10.254.10.10. IP Address. In this state, when the Zero-Client Adapter is not addressable from the Userful server, it may assign itself a conflicting IP address that is also assigned to another client. Once these clients have IP addresses on the same network as the Userful server, they can be managed, and IP address settings can be changed from the Userful Infinity Platform.

Network Capacity and Estimated Bandwidth Usage

All deployments must have a 10GB uplink since the throughput of the Zero Client network interface is limited by drivers up to 1 Gbps.

Firewall Rules

The following Internet destinations should be accessible by the Userful server for complete connectivity and support.

The following local ports must be accessible from your LAN to allow browser-based access.

Access to the following local port from the corporate LAN on an on-premise server is optional.

The following ports must be available between a Userful on-premise server and endpoints running uClient and between the uClient and the Internet.

Zero Client uses the following ports and protocols to communicate with the Userful server. It is recommended that they have unrestricted access to the isolated network.

The uClient devices must be able to communicate with the Internet to sync with the Userful Infinity Platform. Also, they must be able to communicate with each other across the local network to maintain content synchronization when used in a calibrated video wall.

For DNS Discovery options, please refer to your Sales Engineer during deployment to implement a successful connection to the Userful server.

On-Premise DNS Discovery

Userful on-premise discovery allows uClients to discover the IP address of the on-premise server on networks without an active Internet connection. This method traverses subnets without the need for multicast or broadcast traffic.

The deployment location's DNS should contain specific records created by local administrations for the uClient to discover the On-Premises servers’ IP address.

DNS Address Rules

Using the existing suffix of the domain at the deployment location, the local networks’ DNS should have A record or CNAME record that resolves to the IP address of the Userful on-premises server with the prefix userful-discovery. Here are the rules to create the local network DNS.

  • Use the existing suffix of the domain.

  • Create a record or CNAME record with the prefix userful-discovery that resolves the IP address of the Userful on-premise server. For example, if the local DNS suffix is example.com, the A or CNAME record should be userful-discovery.example.com.

uClient Address Rules

For the uClient to detect the deployment location’s domain suffix, the deployment location’s DHCP service should include a DNS search domain value as part of the DHCP service. With this search domain, uClients attempts to connect to userful-discovery with the operating system filling in the domain suffix from the DHCP search domain. If uClients fail to connect to userful-discovery, the uClient finds the DNS suffix by PTR (reverse) lookup of the IP addresses in the following order:

  1. The uClient

  2. The default gateway

  3. The DNS server

Important points to note:

  • The suffix is determined by removing the portion of the name before the first dot(.). For example, if one of the above names resolves to host.subdomain.example.com, the DNS suffix will be subdomain.example.com.

  • For each of the above-resolved names, if the userful-discovery, A, or CNAME record can not be found, the domain suffix is truncated until only one dot(.) remains.

  • For use cases with multiple on-premises servers, append an integer to the domain prefix. For example, userful-discovery1.example.com, userful-discovery2.example.com, userful-discovery3.example.com, etc.

For DNS Discovery options, please get in touch with a sales engineer during deployment to implement a successful connection to the Userful server.

Updates

uClient and uClient WebOS

It requires access to both the on-premise server and the Internet to receive uClient application updates and device firmware updates. It does not need to access the corporate LAN. uClient can operate on a completely isolated network. However, provisions must be taken to manually distribute application and firmware updates to the devices when the server receives updates.

Android uClient or LG WebOS

It requires access to a local server and the Internet to receive application and firmware updates. LG WebOS firmware updates can be delivered from the Internet or installed on the device using a USB key.

Userful uClients can access cloud-connect.userful.com via TCP port 443 and traverse subnets while remaining connected to the same subnet as the local server. If the system operates offline and there are no updates or Internet access, it is recommended to use Zero-Client Adapters. uClient devices come out of the box querying for DHCP on their local wired interfaces and can be manually configured with static IP addresses.

Zero-Client Adapters

These can be placed on a completely isolated network with only access to the Userful server, as Firmware updates for Zero-Client Adapters are delivered from the server.

Currently, uClients require access to both the on-premise server and the Internet to receive uClient application updates and device firmware updates. This feature will be upgraded in the upcoming releases, where updates to uClient adapters will be made directly from the server.

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