Wellnomics^® Client/Server FAQ

NOTE: This is a technical document designed for reading by IT personnel.
Below are answers to Frequently Asked Questions about communication between the Wellnomics^® server and the Wellnomics client which is installed on each desktop computer. For an overview of the Wellnomics client/server architecture and its technical requirements see data sheet The Wellnomics System Architecture.

The client/server connection

Each Wellnomics Client periodically connects to the server to upload the statistics collected and to receive configuration changes from the server. To distribute the traffic to the server and on the network as evenly as possible, each client randomly selects a time during the day to connect to the server. If a connection cannot be made (e.g. the network is down, or a laptop isn’t connected to the Internet) then the client will check again after 5 minutes and continue to recheck regularly until a connection is available again.

Typically users turn on or login to their computer when they first arrive in the morning. At this time the majority of the Wellnomics clients will be due to connect to the server. To distribute the traffic to the server more evenly across the morning, each client chooses a random time period from when the computer is turned on to connect. This random period is configurable from the server and is set 1-3 hours by default.

The client uploads to the server a daily summary of the user’s computer usage statistics (e.g. number of hours spent on the computer, number of keystrokes, mouse clicks, etc.). Additional information such as number of breaks taken and current breaks and exercise settings can also be uploaded. The server in turn sends to the client configuration information to make settings changes (e.g. changing how often breaks are reminded, or which exercises are displayed).

Network traffic requirements for Wellnomics are very small. The client communicates to the server via a compressed XML protocol. In a normal daily transaction approximately 4kb of data is sent to the server and 4kb is received from the server (this means uploading one daily data record, and the associated protocol overhead). This is about the size of one small email sent and received per day per user.

If your organisation has been running Wellnomics WorkPace and cross-grades to the Wellnomics client, there will be a one-off upload of all of the daily statistics already collected locally on the machine. This upload occurs the very first time the user runs the Wellnomics client. The daily records are uploaded in blocks of 20 and require about 40kb of traffic per block. A typical user will have around 250 records per year hence the traffic is about 500kb per user per year of data. This is equivalent to sending and receiving an email with average sized attachment (e.g. a PDF document or Word document). To distribute the traffic to the server more evenly across the morning, each client chooses a random connect time from when the computer is first turned on. The built-in random first connect range is set to 1-3 hours.

Yes, the communication protocol compresses the data to minimize the Internet traffic. Since the protocol is text based, the average compression ratio is around 90%.

If an internet connection is available, but the client fails to connect to the server it will retry periodically until the connection is successful. The default retry period is 1 hour. Since the accumulated data is cached locally on the machine, no data loss occurs if the client cannot connect for long periods of time (e.g. for a mobile laptop user). The retry period is configurable from the server. Note that the user is not interrupted with any messages when a connection failure occurs, but the failure is noted in a log file. No overhead is incurred by the client retrying the connection regularly.

Laptop computers are treated no differently from desktop computers. The Wellnomics client attempts to connect to the server as described above. If the Internet is not available data is cached locally until the connection available. Therefore no data is lost even if the user does not connect for many days or weeks. Due to the low traffic overhead of the communication protocol, even communication through a dial-up modem connection will only take around 1 second (i.e. 4 kilobytes at say 48 kb/s).

Normally under Windows, if a program attempts to communicate across the Internet when no connection is available the user is prompted to ‘Connect to the Internet ‘ (e.g. via a dial up connection). The Wellnomics client does not cause this pop-up because it first detects if there is an Internet connection already available. If there is no connection, it will not attempt to communicate across the Internet.

Latency does not affect the effectiveness of the communication protocol, as it is an asynchronous process. The only impact of latency is when the entire communication process takes longer to complete due to any delay in the messages exchanged between the client and the server. Latency does not cause an increase in bandwidth, or cause delays.

Security and Privacy

Yes, the data sent and received between the client and server uses a proprietary closed protocol over a 128-bit SSL (secure socket layer) connection. The security is implemented by the use of an SSL certificate. This means the data is encrypted and cannot be intercepted. This is the same technology used by banks to secure financial transactions sent via the Internet.

Yes, users can only access the Wellnomics server through the Wellnomics Portal. Users need to logon using application based authentication (username and password) while being connected over secure HTTP.

Yes, all data within the Microsoft SQL Server database used is encrypted. Information within the database can only be read by logging onto the Wellnomics Portal. This prevents access to data by staff with IT Administrator or Database Administrator rights on the Wellnomics system. The structure of the database is not encrypted which allows for ease of backup and restore functions.

This is a requirement of privacy legislation in many countries. Through the Wellnomics Portal any user can login and review all information stored about them. This includes risk assessments, statistics on computer use and break compliance, their risk levels and notes on their health and safety.

User roles are defined to restrict both functionality and specific data access. For example, managers may be restricted to viewing departmental summary reports only, which do not identify individual employees. Alternatively, managers may only be allowed to view data on the reporting staff they are responsible for. Access to detailed assessment information on each employee can be restricted to health and safety personnel only.

For further technical information see data sheet The Wellnomics System Architecture.