Sun Ray Clients and Oracle Virtual Desktop Clients use the Appliance Link Protocol (ALP) to connect to a Sun Ray server. ALP provides some limited security features, which can be administered at the Sun Ray server level. For example, ALP can encrypt keystroke and display traffic between the desktop client and the Sun Ray server, but it does not encrypt USB device traffic.

After the desktop client is authenticated and connected to the Sun Ray server via ALP, the Sun Ray Windows connector, when used, provides access to the Windows desktop via RDP. The RDP connection can and should occur entirely within the data center.