"Jared B. Reimer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I actually installed the 3.0 FCS today on a Linux box. Maybe it's > my imagination, but it does FEEL a little faster. Still not quite > what I'd hoped, though, which is a truly pretty pleasant end user > experience at moderate (sub-1Mbps) consumer broadband speeds. I > was artificially choking back bandwidth using the DHCP attribute > (NewTBW I think it was) and did not actually try this over a DSL > connection. Is this a realistic way to accomplish a simulation of > what it might be like over a WAN, ignoring latency? Or is that > DHCP attribute not an accurate mechanism for regulating bandwidth > usage?
Throttling the bandwidth via the DHCP parameter doesn't produce quite the same results as a real low-bitrate pipe. It's rather burstier --like trying to travel at an average 1mph by driving at 100mph for 36 seconds, slamming on the brakes and then waiting for an hour before doing it again. However, the Gnome desktop is more likely to be responsible for sluggish behaviour. It's very fond of repainting large amounts on on-screen real estate for no terribly good reason, and burning lots of CPU and I/O by busy-waiting and crawling all over the filesystem on a regular basis. Not a big deal if you're the only user on a multi-GHz desktop with a fast local frame buffer, but bad news for multi-user machines with thin-pipe connections to frame buffers like Sun Ray. This situation should improve over time. > > What desktop, what applications and what kinds of traffic were > > you running over the DSL? Did you capture any packet loss or > > latency numbers? > > Is there an optimal desktop OS for the SunRay? I'd imagined that > they would all behave more or less similarly. I am using RedHat + > gnome, and the key application in my case is web browsing via > Firefox. Any ideas, tips, tricks, etc. would be greatly > appreciated. There's a chapter on how to minimise Gnome overhead in Sun's "Gnome Troubleshooting Guide" at <http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-1740/6mhev3brn?a=view>. See Chapter 8, "Performance Enhancement". Almost all of that applies to Gnome on any platform, not just Solaris. The "wireframe window move" feature, a big win for Sun Ray, might not be available under Gnome on Red Hat. If it is then it'll be controlled by a different gconf key than the Sun-specific one in that doc. Try 'gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/metacity/general/reduced_resources true', that works for me on RHAS 3. Firefox itself seems to be reasonable, its performance depends largely on the page content. Animation will be painful over low bandwidth and anything involving audio will hurt too. > On an unrelated note: I've heard rumors that Sun has developed a > SunRay client in Java. Have you heard anything about this, by > chance? The Sun Ray development and QA groups have a few different client emulators. They're internal tools, not products. > > Do you work for Sun on this project, by chance? You seem to be > extremely knowledgeable about the product. Either way, could we > chat offline briefly? Perhaps you can shed some light on some > questions I've had for a while. I work for Sun in the Sun Ray development group. I'll be happy to take a shot at answering your questions although I won't be able to give you information beyond what I'd be able to say in public on the list. OttoM. __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Disclaimer: These are my opinions. I do not speak for my employer. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm _______________________________________________ SunRay-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.filibeto.org/mailman/listinfo/sunray-users
