[Cialug] X to X

[Jeffrey C. Ollie]

On Thu, 2007-03-01 at 08:01 -0600, Daniel A. Ramaley wrote:
> On Wednesday 28 February 2007 23:55, Jeffrey C. Ollie wrote:
> >Then, when you SSH from one system to another SSH will take care of
> >setting up xauth and the DISPLAY environment variable to securely
> >forward the X protocol across the SSH connection.  This will work
> > pretty well over a fast LAN connection, but will be pretty slow
> > across the Internet.
> 
> Raw X over SSH is indeed sluggish over a slow connection. But i've run 
> VNC over SSH before and despite seeming to have more stuff to send (an 
> entire desktop as opposed to just 1 application), it is much more 
> responsive. Unfortunately, i do VNC over SSH so rarely that i can never 
> remember the commands to start a session and so i usually just use X 
> over SSH and tolerate the slowness.

The relative responsiveness of VNC vs the X protocol probably has to do
with how each protocol works.  VNC just sends screen data in one
direction and mouse movement and keystrokes in the other direction.  The
X protocol is much more of a request/reply type of protocol where the
latency of a slow connection has a much more noticeable effect.  And
don't underestimate the amount of data that X has to send...

Jeff

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