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Proxy Servers Lighten Up X
An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com is reporting on a compression and differential proxy scheme for X that makes it practical to xhost rich applications like Mozilla or a whole UNIX desktop over a 9.6Kbps connection (think cell phone with GSM modem). The company developing NX has a neat test drive set up -- and it is way zippier than VNC. There'll be a paper about it at the next LinuxKongress in Saarbrucken, Germany, and a call is out to OSS programmers to build on the GPL'ed NX library."
Its surely not meant for that, think gsm -> bluetooth -> laptop This should be sweet
The mobile phone screen angle is a red herring. The really great thing about this is that it massively reduces the bandwidth required for running X over the network and it also reduces latency. The issue is that X consumes a lot of bandwidth. In some cases, if the bandwidth is available, X will use up to 10 Mbps to display a remote application screen. This is excessive and limits the use of X. Running X through ssh with compression enabled helps tremendously but can still consume 220Kbps. VNC offers similar 220Kbps or less performance to X through ssh but has much higher latencey so, it's not perfect either.
This new NX proxy is claiming 9.6Kbps X applications. Even if it doesn't come close to delivering that and is closer to 28Kbps or even 40Kbps it is still a massive improvement over X and ssh or even VNC and it now falls in line with the Citrix ICA protocol. It also apparently adds some of the Citrix features that X was missing but, the reduction in bandwidth alone is a tremendous improvement. You don't have to use it on a mobile phone and chances are I never will.
Yes it is. In fact, X is liked by so many because of its network transparency.
However, the amount of data that a typical "rich" X client sends (e.g., mozilla) is huge. Many X clients are not optimized in terms of the amount of display information they output (that is, they output a lot of stuff that could probably be optimized away). For many developers, this is within reason since they figure that most of the time the xserver and xclient will be on the same machine (e.g., running mozilla on my box to display on my monitor).
This handy piece of proxy software put out by NX claims to be able to cache a lot of the data that X clients send, thereby reducing the amount of data actually transmitted. This will allow "rich" applications which send a lot of data to be run over slower connections with an apparenet reduce in lag time.
/<en
UK UNIX User Group
Linux Conference 2003
The NX Project
What is NX?
- NX is a remote desktop system based on X-Window
- Adds features to X-Window usually found in proprietary systems like MS RDP and Citrix ICA
- Makes possible to run contemporary Unix applications over the Internet
- Compresses the X protocol by an average factor of 50:1 and more
- Allows users to work comfortably on 28.8Kbps or even 9.6 Kbps modem connections
- Reduces X protocol round-trips nearly to zero
- Implements image streaming algorythms to reduce the perceived latency
- Is able to translate RDP and RFB foreign remote desktop protocols to X
- Runs these foreign remote desktop sessions faster than their native protocols
- It integrates with SMB to provide access to the client's file systems
- It integrates with ARTSD and ESD to allow media playback
- Adds server management tools to handle X, RDP and RFB sessions run by users
- Architecture is designed to distribute the server workload between multiple nodes
- It leverages SSH remote execution capabilities to avoid the need to run a new network server
- It is able to encrypt and protect the network traffic by tunneling the connections through SSH
- Server is intended to run on any Unix OS
- Client runs on Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS/X, Sony Playstation/2, MS Xbox and embedded devices like HP/Compaq iPAQ and Sharp Zaurus
- NX core components and X compression libraries are released under the GPL license
- NX client GUI (nxclient) and the NX server manager (nxserver) are commercial software
- The NX client-server protocol is open
- A library handling the client-server protocol and a compatible command-line NX client have been released under the GPL license
- NoMachine has publicly offered its help to let OSS developers build a free implementation of both the nxclient GUI and the nxserver NX System Architecture X NX "protocol" (internet, modem) Local X display Local NX proxy system Remote NX proxy system Remote X application Windows Terminal Server, XP Prof. (Tight) VNCServer nxagent (based on Xnest) nxdesktop (based on rdesktop) nxviewer (based on vncviewer) RDP X RFB
What features are missing?
- X session persistence and reconnection - Better support of RENDER extension - Better support of X applications in seamless mode
- Better support of SMB file-sharing and printing
- Seamless access to client's peripherals and devices
- A new multimedia architecture with native streaming of media formats
- Better integration with Unix and Windows desktop environments to allow point-and-click remote execution of applications
- Better server management tools, including a Web administration interface
- An open API to let customers and developers to write server extensions What NX would like to become?
- A convenient way to let users of mobile phones and other thin devices to get access to complex, rich applications
- A server infrastructure by which people can easily run applications regardless they reside on the local machine or a remote server
- A peer-to-peer computing environment where users can easily access computing resources, like storage and printers, on any server available on the Internet
- A step in the direction of the "network desktop" envisioned by many
Did you RTFA?
NX places a caching proxy server on either side of X's client-server architecture, reducing network traffic to differential transfers of whatever is not already cached. The company says programmers rarely optimize X applications for low throughput on the X client-server interface, resulting in many needless "round-trip" data transfers that NX can largely eliminate.
So instead of taking the whole X session and cramming it over ssh (even with compression) you cache the majority of it and just pass the deltas.
It has ssh capability so I imagine you can tunnel it but you would still be tunneling a LOT less traffic.
You don't have very much experience working in a corporate Unix environment, do you?
Who would use it? Every corporate I.T. dept on the planet which has Unix or Linux installed somewhere.
We have 400 hardware and software engineers who's only access to Unix is a Gnome login. Everything they do is remote to arrays of rackmounted Unix boxes. It saves a fortune every year.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.