On Sun, 2006-02-04 at 12:58 -0500, Scott Balneaves wrote: > 1) First of all, assuming you're going to provide storage space + some > kind of local devices access, how much space are you going to give them? > The "$400 PC" probably comes with an 80 or 120 gig drive. How much > space/user are you realistically going to be able to offer them?
I haven't thought this through, and I'm more familiar with Thinstation now than with LTSP, but in my mind storage shouldn't be a problem. If a local device, such as a USB stick, can be read and written to from a Thinclient, what's stopping a service provider from creating an integrated device that uses the network for the "desktop", but the local device, say a 120GB USB drive, for storage? This would eliminate the "who owns the data" problem, and a whole slew of other data storage issues. > 2) Neither "cheap" Cable or DSL services offer any kind of guarenteed > bandwidth provisions. Grandma isn't going to be too pleased with the > service when the network slows down to 21.2 Kilobytes/sec because every > 15 year old kid on the block's P2P'ing the latest 50 cent album. This is an issue, but not completely insurmountable. For example, using NX would be a great way to reduce the bandwidth consumed. Session saving would come in handy for those times the connection dies (e.g. power outage). However, some minimum service guarantee would likely be necessary. Also, even with NX, the total bandwidth consumed across all customers would be insanely high; it would be never ending. > 3) Most Cable/DSL services have a monthly Gigabyte transfer limit before > you start getting charged extra. If every byte of screen info's gonna > rack up your charges, it's not going to take too many sessions of > looking at the gradkids latest 1600x1200 pictures before Grandma's > monthly charges get pretty high. NX caches data, does it not? I'm pretty sure the cache is one of the reason's why NX is so fast. Still, can you imagine the bandwidth used when a person requests a video stream? First there's the stream itself, and then the bandwidth needed to update the thin client session where the end user is viewing the video. Yikes. Anyway, I don't see something like this being feasible for a while, at least in North America. If this was in Japan, or in other countries where consumers can purchase 100 Mbps Internet connections, it might just work. Regards, Ranbir -- Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu Linux 2.6.16-1.2069_FC4 i686 GNU/Linux 01:44:18 up 18:13, 2 users, load average: 0.06, 0.15, 0.22 ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642 _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
