Estimate the bandwidth required by IBM Cognos Mobile

IBM® Cognos® Mobile sends compressed versions of reports from the server to the mobile device. The size of a compressed report might range from 2 KB for a single-page report that contains text and a crosstab, up to possibly 500 KB for a 10-page report that contains multiple detailed charts on every page.

Each version of a report is sent only once. It is then stored in a cache on the mobile device. A mobile user can then view the report any number of times on the device without consuming any additional bandwidth.

Other operations, such as browsing the content store and answering prompts, also consume bandwidth. The bandwidth consumed is proportional to that used by a desktop browser performing the same action, but smaller because extraneous formatting information would not be exchanged.

IBM Cognos Mobile engages in intelligent polling to detect changes on the server. In an idle state, each mobile device sends a small data message to the server every 24 hours. (Note that this value is configurable). If there is heavy usage, where a mobile device user runs many reports throughout the day and schedules many reports for delivery to the mobile device, the device automatically checks in with the server more frequently.

To estimate bandwidth costs, an administrator can use the following formula as a guide:

(number of users) x (average size of a report) x (number of adhoc reports run each day per user + number of scheduled reports sent to each user per day).