[ale] Slirp vs. Term

[Eric]

Don Allison writes:
 > >There is something called low-bandwidth X and various compression 
 > >protocols for X.  I haven't tried 'em and have not heard any comments 
 > >good or bad, but you might try digging up some info.  Though ISDN 
 > >is probably the easier choice.  However, maybe the 2 can work 
 > >together.  Let us know if you find anything out.
 > 
 > In case anyone else is interested, I thought I'd add what I found when I
 > went browsing. (note that I haven't tried any of these out yet so
 > caveat emptor...)
 > 
 > 1.  At the Tech FTP site, in directory Linux/X11/xutils is a utility
 > dxpc-2.0.1.tar.gz, that is "An X protocol compressor that improves X11
 > performance over low-bandwidth network connections."

We've used this at work.  If you're familiar with using X over a PPP
line, it will make things go faster for repaints and the like.  If you
have never used X over PPP, then a PPP link with dxpc is still going to
seem dog slow (in other words, you have to use uncompressed X over a PPP
link to appreciate the speedup that dxpc gives you.)  It basically works
as a cache on either side (a lot of the communication over X is
repetitive.)  The initial time to get things started is the same (about
30 seconds to open a new window), and the time to send over high
bandwith information (pixmaps) is also about the same.   


-Eric.