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TS via VPN slow? - NX Protocol?: msg#00107

network.thinstation.devel

Subject: TS via VPN slow? - NX Protocol?

Greetings!

Working via semi-broadband (768kbit/s) VPN and X11, I am fighting the
sluggish performance, as soon as "active" widgets (esp. drag&drop) are
used. The X11 roundtrips are killing the performance, as bandwidth
requirements are held a bit down by utilizing SSH comnpression. For
background info see
http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/usenix2003/html/net.html

Has someone heard of NoMachine's NX protocol? Or already had hands-on
experience?
http://www.linux-kongress.org/2003/abstracts/#3_7_2
http://www.nomachine.com/documentation/intr-technology.php

What I read sounds quite good. Could ease LAN infrastructure worries in
big installations (hundreds and more of TS against a cluster of
servers), as bandwidth requirements seems to be MUCH lower. And home
offices consisting of only a X terminal would be usable not just as
emergency measure. Code is free and seems to be complete (e.g.
available as experimental .DEB package):
http://www.nomachine.com/sources.php
http://www.kalyxo.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/NoMachineNX

Thus I think that would be a great addition to TS - and one
differenciating us from the other distribs (LTSP et al).

As for VPN I was preferring OpenVPN over IPSec due to better handling of
"client" configurations and easier setup on multiple machines and OSes.
SSH could be another option, one that allows simple user handling -
especially for the Unix crowd.

As I'm an X11 guy (sorry RDP/Citrix), I'll set NXclient (session type)
as priority 1 for my thinstation activities now - the poor performance
over (slow / high latency) is currently the killer argument against far
distributed TS installations. As NX is based (network-wise) on SSH, a
"real" VPN (IPSec/OpenVPN) is not that important any more...

I intend to get NX up and running on my Debian (stable) system first,
then build a client package for TS 2.x, before starting to port it over
to uclib.

Anyone to join in?

Bye

Volker Tanger




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