From: gpatapis@boyd.tansu.com.au (George Patapis)
Subject: Re: DESQview/X on a PC and network Traffic
Organization: AOTC - CSSC
Lines: 71
Distribution: world
Reply-To: gpatapis@boyd.tansu.com.au
NNTP-Posting-Host: boyd.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au


In article 1369@qdeck.com, support@qdeck.com (Technical Support) writes:
>In article <1qtk84$rn5@picasso.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au> gpatapis@boyd.tansu.com.au writes:
>
>>What sort of traffic is generated with the X-calls?  I am curious to find
>>out the required bandwidth that a link must have  if one machine running
>>DV/X is supporting multiple users (clients) and we require adequate response
>>time.  Anyone have any ideas ??  
>
>I expect the limiting factor will be your server machine, not the network
>itself. To give you a real-world example, here at Quarterdeck we have
>roughly 100 people using DVX to talk to a bunch of unix boxes, novell
>file servers, and each other. It's not _too_ much of a load on our
>Ethernet (with maybe 4 concentrators, so you have 20-30 people on each
>segment). If you had a badly loaded net, or the apps you wanted to run
>were very network intensive, you could run into some slowdowns.
>
>But the biggest problem would be the machine itself. Say you have a 486
>33 with plenty of ram and a fast hard disk and network card. If you have
>10 people running programs off it, you're going to see some slowdowns
>because you're now on (effectively) a 3.3 MHz 486. Of course, DVX will
>attempt to see if tasks are idle and make sure they give up their time
>slice, but if you have 10 working programs running, you'll know it.
>

Well I can buy a bigger and more powerful server machine because of the 
significant drop in price year after year.  The link I want to use 
though (ISDN 64K) is costly and the bandwidth limited.  That's why my
interest lies in seeing if such a link can be used and see what traffic 
goes through it.


>Having said that, if you can tweak the programs being run (by adding
>in calls to give up time slices when idle and that sort of
>thing), you could probably run 15-20 people on a given machine before
>you started seeing slowdowns again (this time from network bandwidth).

Hmmm.  Has anyone at your centre monitored the traffic at all?  Are you
running any standard MS-Windows programs like Word ?  What sort of 
packets go blazing through? What size link do you have (2Mb or 10Mb ?).
What is the average traffic flow going through your network or do you
have few high peaks and then many low points?


>It all really depends on what the programs are doing (ie. you're going
>to see a slowdown from X-bandwidth a lot sooner if your apps are all
>doing network things also...)
>-- 

What do you mean by network things?  I vision using MS Windows and other
Windows applications over the network were the processes are running on
the server and all I am getting are the displays.  I am wondering how 
good is the X and subsequently DV/X protocol in transferring these 
images with X-calls and displaying them on a client's machine.


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