[K12OSN] K12LTSP Over Dialup

[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 14:35, Jim and Kelly Younkin wrote:
> This statement makes me wonder about LTSP:
> " The whole concept of thin clients requires a fast connection to the
> server to work.  "

LTSP installs nothing on the thin client and downloads everything
it needs to run as you boot up.  This is fast and cheap over a
local 100M ethernet but not something you want to do at 56k.
You could boot locally from a CD, but access is still done with
the X protocol which needs a lot of bandwidth.  There are extensions
like LBX to reduce the bandwidth needed to a remote site but I
haven't seen a lot about people using them.

> Here is something I read about using VNC with Linux:
> "You would be shocked at how little bandwidth is required to do such a
> thing. 

VNC sends screen differences in a fairly crude way - if the screen
doesn't change much or very often it can work over a low
bandwidth connection.  In fact it is usually possible to do most
things if absolutely necessary, but the latency of the screen
updates is so annoying that you wouldn't want to do all your
work that way.  However it is free and easy enough to test
with whatever applications you plan to use.  If you just fill
in an occasional form it might be OK.  Be sure to use an up to
date version that has compression at both ends.

---
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com