Re: Flash, Youtube and Thin Clients

Is it just me, or does everyone else also block everything that has
you tube like content (bebo, <other>tube, youtube, myspace, facebook)
through their dansguardian?

My solution, which really is something that works while local apps
gets ready for a production server, is to make some of the clients
fat, and force flash heavy lessons on those clients... not a nice
solution, and horribly complex firewall/dansguardian rules
sometimes.... network friendly flash content and intermittent printer
failure is the biggest thing currently plaguing our pilot ltsp setup.

location: Marbella, Spain
stupidly powerful server with 150 thin/fat clients

Kind Regards,
David Van Assche

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 4:13 PM, Jim McQuillan <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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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