Re: Flash, Youtube and Thin Clients

Warren,

Thanks for taking on this adventure to make flash/ltsp work better together.


Warren Togami wrote:
> I had a talk with someone from Adobe today about our problem with Adobe
> Flash, Youtube and Thin Clients.
> 
> A video of 320x240 resolution at 30fps uses ~70Mbit/sec bandwidth.  This
> kind of bandwidth is completely unusable for thin clients.  For safety
> reasons many of us are forced to disable Flash plugin on our LTSP
> servers in order to avoid killing our networks with only a few clients
> swamping all available bandwidth.

Makes local apps that much more appealing.  Keep the media stream 
compressed until it reaches the thin client, then decode and display it.

I don't think local apps is quite ready for prime time, but it's getting 
there.

> 
> This is a shame, because Flash is plenty useful without Youtube and
> similar videos.
> 
> I had an idea, what if there were a boolean option in /etc/adobe/mms.cfg
> that could turn off playing of .flv movies?  Then Flash could remain
> very useful for LTSP thin clients, and we wouldn't have to disable it
> entirely for safety reasons.
> 
> Adobe is hesitant.  They say that this is only a policy problem:
> 
> - We should simply tell users not to use any Youtube-like video.  This
> is simply an unreasonable expectation.  Even if all users knew to avoid
> it, it is simply too easy these days to accidentally load a page with
> embedded Flash video.
> - We should use QoS to throttle bandwidth between the terminal server
> and thin clients to protect the network from this kind of failure.  This
> adds complexity in network configuration, and indiscriminately punishes
> all applications, while being ineffective to solve the problem.
> - We should block all possible video sites at our proxy server.  This is
> problematic because there is an arbitrary number of video sites out
> there growing all the time.  Also the below reasons apply.
> - We should block all .flv URL's at the proxy server.  This sounds
> pretty good and would be the simplest workaround, except this fails for
> several reasons including:
> 1) Not every site has or wants proxy filtering.
> 2) A site may want normal desktops to be able to use .flv video while
> disabling it only on the LTSP server.
> 3) It is impossible to selectively filter .flv on a https server.
> 
> I am suggesting to Adobe in response that these suggestions require us
> to jump through hoops, adding lots of complexity and are ultimately
> ineffective in solving the problem.  Meanwhile a tiny change to their
> plugin to implement a boolean variable for an optional config file would
> enable a complete and simple solution, where Flash remains plenty useful
> for many other non-video uses.
> 
> The alternative that we are forced with if they do not agree to this
> simple request: We must disable the plugin on our terminal servers in
> order to protect the stability of our networks.
> 
> To be fair, Adobe didn't know that we existed as a very sizeable
> deployment base of Linux desktops until this conversation.  Also they

They must have gotten rid of all the old Macromedia developers, because 
6 years ago, they sure knew about LTSP, when they had a SHM problem with 
the flash player that prevented it from working at all on remote X 
displays.  We had a petition representing something like 1.3 million 
users.  We forwarded that on to Macromedia, and the problem was fixed.

> are very late in the Flash Player 10 development cycle and any change,
> no matter how seemingly simple, can create risk.  I would suggest
> however, that in this case the benefit is very large, while the risks
> are small.
> 
> I am asking for the support of all Linux distributions before I approach
> Adobe with a stern but polite appeal.  May I count on your leadership's
> co-signing in asking for this option?
> 
> Do you run a school or business with LTSP and have been plagued by this
> Flash video bandwidth problem?  Please let the list know your
> organization, location, and # of thin clients affected.  I would like to
> include this as a random incomplete sample of affected users when I
> submit the formal letter.

I've got a site with about 55 thin clients.  I'll help in any way I can.

Jim McQuillan
[email protected]


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