[K12OSN] Slow Flash - what to do...

[William Fragakis]

My school is running K12LTSP. Everything has been going well until we 
started using web-based programs with a Flash interface (Renaissance 
Place, nee Accelerated Reader). When the 6th or 7th client brings up 
the page, everything turns to molasses. This also happens if some kids 
are using Flash and others, TuxType. We can run 10 clients doing 
Tuxtype with no problem and I've had 10 Flash animations going but a 
couple of each alone also induces the situation.

We are running K12LTSP 4.4.1 (FC4) on a dual core P4 with 2GB of RAM. 
According to both top and System Monitor, we run into the problem even 
if CPU use is only 35-40%. We aren't even hitting the swap space 
either. Using IceWM didn't seem to help, either. The clients are VIA 
600mhz (128mb RAM) mini-itxs. We've specified the via driver in 
lts.conf, too.

We have 10 clients per server which in all other uses is no problem.

Any ideas? Network latency? Is top not showing the real CPU use? 
Googling revealed no magic cure, either.

Regards,
William