Gate One Will Support X11: Fast Enough To Run VLC In Your Browser

Riskable writes "Ever seen a remote desktop tool that's fast/efficient enough to play back video? Gate One will soon have that capability via the forthcoming X11 support (as demonstrated in the video). I am posting this to Slashdot looking for suggestions and feedback as to how I should move forward with it before I solidify the architecture, API, and even the business end of it (making money). I'll be watching the thread and replying to comments (as I have time). Also, if you're interested you can sign up to be notified when it's available." We've posted a few stories about Gate One previously.

Comments

F/OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

...and even the business end of it (making money).

Well, you just release the source and documentation; then hire yourself out as a consultant and the money will just come in! You can also write O'Reilly books on your software. We all know that O'Reilly authors are all 1%'ers with their private jets and everything.

The network says no

[girlintraining]

Look, the protocol could be the greatest thing since sliced bread. It could have free orgasms built into it. It might even have the cure for cancer.

But it can't overcome latency, or shannon's law regarding just how much data you can shove over a given network link. You can cheat by using lossful compression, you can employ predictive algorithms, but at the end of the day it'll only be as good as the network lets it. That's why there haven't been any big advancements in this area: There's none to make. Remote desktop will be varying degrees of shitty for the forseeable future, because our network links are shit. ISPs purposefully sabotage remote desktop and VPN because it's a threat to their business model. You can't "protocol" that away. Believe me, people have tried.

At best, we'll be able to trade one variety of crap for another, but remote desktop will never come close to the experience of actually using the computer at the same location. Human beings start to notice lag between their own actions and computer responses in as little as 50ms. The network links typically take longer than that to send the data. Especially over wifi.

Re:The network says no

[SJHillman]

I don't know... most of our RDP users where I work just do the same thing over and over... you could probably buffer their actions.

Re:The network says no

[MozeeToby]

If you have an otherwise decent connection you should be able to play 1080p just fine. If you can't, your ISP is probably sending the traffic to one of the massively overloaded mirrors they run. You can block them easily by following the directions here for Linix or here for Windows. Or you can apply the same rules at your router to take care of the issue for your whole network.

Re:The network says no

[gstoddart]

I'll worry about that when my data-center is on Mars.

Then, I'm afraid you might not have enough practical experience on the topic.

I've encountered performance issues across an organization, and definitely been able to identify it as network latency.

And when we spoke with the network architects, they essentially told us it could be made no faster because of the distances involved. I'm not talking trans-continental/trans-oceanic links, I'm talking two data centers separated by only about a thousand miles.

And, with the latency issues, we can't make some things responsive enough to interactive users to not be exceedingly painful. A 60-100ms latency is enough to have users screaming at you as everything they do has a long delay in it -- for interactive applications, that's very noticeable.

You don't need to have data centers on Mars to be able to experience latency which is exceedingly painful. Within the last few months I've personally ran up against it in an organization which has offices through North America.

If you're just mirroring data, sure. But running an interactive application over a long-distance link for which latency becomes a factor -- that can be very painful. And even within North America, you can easily get to the point where the latency can't be fixed because the signal can still only travel so fast.

It really doesn't take all that much distance before it becomes observable. And angry/frustrated users don't want to be told about the laws of physics. They want to be able to click a button and not wait several seconds.