A few weeks ago I wrote:
>I might be showing my ignorance, but surely there must be a piece of software
>around that enables simple X-window applications (like dxmail or dxterm) to run
>extremely fast remotely via a modem.
>My experience is that to run X-applications remotely via a modem is EXTREMELY
>slow. For example, I find that it takes 20 seconds just to throw up a dxterm
>window when I use DEC's Excursion software on an Alpha XL 266 (windows NT)
>connected to an Alpha 3000-600 (running DecUnix) with a 28,800 bps modem.
>DXmail is even worse, taking about 40 sec to appear. This seems to me ridiculous
>when running such standard DEC X-windows on two DEC machines. Surely one does
>not need to send every single pixel of a dxmail window down a modem line. If the
>local machine knew what a dxmail window looks like, it would only need to
>receive simple ASCII text to produce a local copy of the remote dxmail window,
>and it should be able to do that in a fraction of a second!
>Am I dreaming, or is there indeed a software product that is intelligent enough
>to know about standard window formats like dxterm and dxmail?
The answers I received basically said that I'm dreaming :(
Some suggested a speedup might result if DEC's Excursion software is replaced by
some other company's equivalent product, e.g. Hummingbird eXceed, or Reflection X
from Walker Richer, or XWin-32 from
ftp://ftp.starnet.com.
Others mentioned using XRemote protocol developed specifically for serial lines by
NCD and which is included in Excursion (a free version of what may be equivalent to
XRemote is apparently available in the X11R6 distribution going under the name of
LBX - "low bandwidth X").
Another suggestion was to turn my Windows NT PC into a Linux workstation with
X-windows and then run all X-applications locally rather than remote.
Many thanks to the following people for their answer:
Lukas Rosenthaler <rosenth_at_foto.chemie.unibas.ch>
Harald Lundberg <hl_at_tekla.fi>
Brian Weaver <weaver_at_psd.k12.co.us>
David Gadbois <gadbois_at_cyc.com>
Jon Trulson <trulsonj_at_mscd.edu>
Justin Richardson <justin.richardson_at_citicorp.com>
atoalu2_at_ato.abb.se (Andreas Lundgren)
Javier Aida <jaida_at_gmd.com.pe>
olle_at_cb.uu.se (Olle Eriksson)
Carlos A M dos Santos <ufpelrm_at_eu.ansp.br>
Ken Teh <teh_at_sun0.phy.anl.gov>
Received on Fri Apr 26 1996 - 07:07:48 NZST