Re: [xougen] GPL-ed X compression scheme -- my gaff

[Per Cederberg]

On Sat, 2003-09-27 at 11:02, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 12:52:58AM +0200, Roland Nagtegaal wrote:
> >Look. I understand that this project does not want to change
> >the X11 protocol, and as far as I can see NX (which is what
> >that link I posted is about) does not do that. It is a
> >protocol compressor. Like lbxproxy, I think.
> 
> I seem to recall Keith Packard saying he'd tested it, and there wasn't
> much of a performance win over using raw gzip compression on the data
> stream.  However, an NX extension will definately be a welcome addition
> to Xouvert; anyone who wants to try it out should be able to.

The "new" thing about NX is that it attempts to overcome 
latency issues by being an "intelligent" proxy. The X11
bandwidth is already possible to reduce by tunneling 
through ssh (or similar), but it seems such solutions 
always have a slightly negative impact on latency. And 
latency is often what makes remote X connections feel 
slow.

I think NX improves latency primarily by caching stuff 
like images and what-not. I also saw a remark on their
web site that a well-written X application could perform 
just as well, but most real-life applications have not 
been optimized for low latency on remote connections.

/Per

-- 
Per Cederberg, Software Consultant
http://www.percederberg.net/software