[nzlug] How fast is XDMCP over Ethernet supposed to be?

[Warren Boyd]

On 2006-08-09, at 12:22 , Johann Schoonees wrote:

> Seeing the related thread "Remote sessions via xdmcp" made me  
> wonder if my set-up is working properly.  I find the graphics  
> update quite sluggish, even just repositioning a simple xterm  
> window on the screen. Scrolling a long web page in Firefox causes  
> large jumps.
>
> I have a newish 3.2GHz Pentium4 as the applications server: it runs  
> FC3 with gdm configured to present a (graphical) login screen via  
> XDMCP.
>
> I have an old 500MHz Celeron as the thin(ish) client: it runs FC3  
> with gdm configured to run an X server looking for a remote host.   
> When I log in I am effectively working on the remote host.
>
> The two are connected via a 10/100Mb/s NIC on the old thin client,  
> about 30m of CAT-5 Ethernet cable between the garage and the house,  
> D-link DSL-504G router, 0.5m CAT-5 Ethernet cable, and gigabit  
> network adapter on the newer compute server's motherboard.
>
> Perhaps the network speed has dropped back to 10Mb/s?  How could I  
> tell if it has?  Or are there other parameters to tweak?

The most noticable effect I have seen with getting XDMCP running  
nicely is to replace the video card.  From memory, this was in a  
P150, 128M ram-ish and an AGP Video card slot.

Originally it was a PCI video card, possibly S3 based ... but Gnome  
and all run really nicely over a cheap 4 port 100 MBit Hub. (It may  
actually have been a 'proper' switch - but it was cheap)

I found that this setup was as fast as running X locally on the  
server machine with the AGP card. (From memory a 128MB Radeon card)

Hope that helps shed some more light to the issue.

Cheers,
Warren.