Re: Some perspective from the cheap seats...

On Saturday 22 March 2003 00:16, Keld Jørn Simonsen wrote:
|  On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 12:46:25PM -0800, Kendall Bennett wrote:
|  > Alan Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
|  > > I'd ask a different question with my general networking hat on.
|  > > Bandwidth is rising pretty much exponentially to many users.
|  > > Latency is nearly a constant and in some cases (cable/ADSL) has
|  > > increased. On that background the question becomes "Is the X model
|  > > wrong for remote computing due to round trip times". VNC for
|  > > example significantly outperforms X (with compress) for remote use
|  > > of Gnome on 802.11b
|  >
|  > Very good point. The downside of course is the VNC is a 'remote desktop'
|  > system much like PC Anywhere for Windows machines. You can't run a
|  > remote VNC application integrated 'seamlessly' into your desktop via VNC
|  > (or PC Anywhere). But it does solve the remote access problem in a
|  > different way, and it may well be that for most uses a VNC style
|  > approach is perfectly suitable. In the old days remote access was nice
|  > for network servers because you could run GUI tools from the remote
|  > machine, but these days with stuff like WebMin who needs to run server
|  > config stuff remotely via X? You can now do everything you need via a
|  > neat web interface that you can access from any machine.
|
|  That raises two wishes for X development from me:
|
|  1. a more efficient protocol that can be used for remote acess over
|  slower lines like ADSL or modems. People looking at terminal Server
|  solutions like LTSP is aking for this.

If you are talking about "slower lines like ADSL" - I guess you mean not 
limited bandwidth (ADSL offers about 7.5Mbit-1.5Mbit transfer rate), but 
increased latency, right? 
I guess X should work quite well via modern Ethernet network, with QoS in 
place (Layer 4 switches/ traffic prioritisation, hardware queues, etc.)
Taking into consideration that some netwroking companies sell Layer 4 switches 
at Level 2 switch prices, it's a question of time to get QoS in place.
And this can happen much faster than someone predicts.

I am curious here, though: wether X can mark packets sent via Ethernet network 
so that priority for those packets would be higher?
If it's not here yet: wether it's implementable?

|
|  2. A system like Suns Xray where a user can leave one terminal and
|  log on at another, and just continue from where s/he left. Also so
|  that a say teacher may take over the control of the pupil's
|  screen and help the pupil.
|
|  Best regards
|  keld

-- 
Best Regards,

Vadim Plessky
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