[plug] X over a Modem

[Kenworthy Family]

Try using VNC instead - its faster and somewhat more secure, and can
also be run thru an ssh tunnel for good security.  Used xhost at Murdoch
Uni for logging into some of the sun machines on the internal network -
fast and usable.  Tried the same from home and very slow, really it was
unusable for any serious graphical work VNC however was acceptable over
a modem (at 48k connection thru iinet) tho a certain amount of slowness
was due to the way the particular application was written - xterms, licq
and even netscape were OK (and I know, a bit silly, I was just testing
to see what I could do!!!).  From memory, VNC encrypts the password and
not the session traffic.  The speed advantage over X is mostly due to
smart caching of X commands - they suggest that thru ssh may be faster
as most encryption programs also perform a degree of traffic compression
(not sure if that is the case or not for common ssh implementations -
someone else may have experience there).

BillK
).

Brad Campbell wrote:

> Allright, I know this is old hat to all you linux (UNIX) guru's
> but I have to say how impressed I am at getting my first remote
> X session running lastnight.
> Although, we logged into a mate's machine over a very laggy
> 33.6k link and it did take nearly 20 minutes to bring up a
> Gnome desktop with a large background pixmap and a full Aqua
> theme. I'm writing this now from my laptop which is running
> my full windowmaker desktop from my other PC.
> Having tried to do this for months, and been foiled at every
> turn, it turned out all I had to do was issue the xhost command
> to enable access to my remote machine. Oh well, ya live and ya
> learn. Now I need to do some homework on X over ssh. Does anyone
> know if there is a compression protocol for X? Maybe to speed
> it up a little over a slow 33.6k link? I guess if both modems
> have compression enabled it removes the need for this anyway..
>
> Just another use also, is, using Xcdroast beta, you must be logged
> in as root. So instead of starting another x server as root, I can
> now su in an xterm, set the display variable and bring an su'd
> Xcdroast up in my normal window manager.
>
> The reason I'm rambling about this here, is I never find out
> about this stuff until I see someone else ramble about it, so
> I figure if I write about it here, someone else might see a
> lightbulb go up and go, "Hey, I have just the use for that".
>
> --
> Brad....
> "The ultimate result is that some innovations that would
> truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason
> that they do not conincide with Microsoft's self-interest"
> - Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson
>          /"\
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