Resolving RDP Session Freezes and Re-Authentication Prompts

Session Management: Resolving RDP Session Freezes and Re-Authentication Prompts

Table of Contents

• Symptoms

• Affected Environments

• Root Cause

• Resolution Steps

• Related Articles

Symptoms

While utilizing the Xona Critical System Gateway (CSG), users may experience unexpected connection drops or freezing during active RDP, SSH, VNC, or HTTPS sessions. For RDP sessions specifically, users might encounter frequent re-authentication prompts during normal usage, and administrators may notice a loss of session recordings associated with these events.

Affected Environments

• Platform: Hardware (1U Server, DIN Rail), Virtual Image (VMware/Hyper-V), AWS AMI, Azure VM

• Software Version: Xona v5.5.0 and newer

• Component: CSG

Root Cause

This behavior is associated with the Auto-Reconnect and Session Hold features. These features were introduced and enabled by default in Xona v5.5.0 to enhance reliability for RDP connections. However, in certain live network environments, frequent packet loss can cause active RDP sessions to frequently attempt renegotiation, resulting in session freezes.

The default behavior was reverted in Xona v5.5.1. However, if your appliance was upgraded from v5.5.0 and these settings were manually modified, the features may remain enabled on your CSG configuration.

Resolution Steps

To restore session stability, the recommended solution is to disable these specific session management features until a permanent optimization is released in a future software update.

1. Log in to the CSG Web UI using an administrator account.

2. Navigate to the affected connection profile settings.

3. Locate the configuration fields for Session Hold and Auto-Reconnect.

4. Set the Session Hold value strictly to 0.

5. Ensure the Auto-Reconnect feature is completely disabled.

6. Click Save to apply the configuration changes.

7. Instruct the affected user to initiate a new session to verify that the connection remains stable.