Applications that allow for the separation of data and executable files are the best option if telephone or low-speed WAN connections are required. This is particularly true of Windows applications. Large database applications will almost always require special handling and customized network design for WAN or dial-in access. Servers and PCs have a wide range of features and capacities. If the license requires the application to reside on all PCs, the PCs must have greater disk space than for an application which is allowed to reside on the server.
Many programs require that hard drive space be made available for swap files.
If the application and the swap file space are on the server, a great deal of additional network traffic will result. With small networks, speed over the net is normally not an issue. However, speed does become an issue with large networks. Users of large networks should look for applications with the smallest possible memory requirement that will meet computing needs. If the memory requirement is large, segmenting the network into several traffic zones is required to keep the data flowing at an acceptable speed.