Timeline for Why is X11 forwarding so inefficient?
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| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 4, 2024 at 9:56 | comment | added | JoL | Adding to Astara's comment, you can still encrypt by using wireguard and the speed improvement is very good. Makes emacs almost indistinguishable from local programs. I've only tried in my local network and not through the internet, though. I guess most of the problem with SSH is from tunneling a UNIX connection inside a TCP connection. | |
| Aug 19, 2023 at 8:38 | comment | added | BjornW | I don't think you see the full scope of this "problem", it's not related to a compression algo being 20% faster or slower. If I open firefox on a remote Ubuntu through ssh forwarding, on a 500 Mbit/s connection, it can take a minute to even get the first window up, and right now I've been trying to click on a single checkbox (nothing else animating on the entire window) and it's using 200 mbit/s continuously for minutes. In contrast, using VNC it's instantly usable on 1 mbit/s. This is why people ask about X11 forwarding... | |
| Jun 24, 2017 at 15:24 | audit | First posts | |||
| Jun 24, 2017 at 20:58 | |||||
| Jun 23, 2017 at 10:59 | audit | First posts | |||
| Jun 24, 2017 at 8:18 | |||||
| Jun 13, 2017 at 8:54 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/super_user/status/874550655037435904 | ||
| Jun 10, 2017 at 17:46 | comment | added | Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen |
Use something like ssh -Y -c blowfish to minimalize overhead while still encrypting. If you have full control of both ends teach ssh to use "none" encryption to get full transfer speed on the connection.
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| Jun 9, 2017 at 20:41 | comment | added | Meower68 | Sounds like you're forwarding through SSH, which has to encrypt / decrypt all of the data. That's going to add overhead / latency. Faster processors might help, but there's a certain amount of latency this will add, no matter WHAT you do. X is very "chatty," so slight increase in latency = significant drop in performance. In times past, I was able to use X, tunneled through SSH over a 28.8 modem; that was using lbxproxy (now deprecated) which cached / compressed a lot of data and reduced the "chattiness" of the connection. Using -C can only add more latency. | |
| Jun 9, 2017 at 13:48 | audit | First posts | |||
| Jun 9, 2017 at 13:48 | |||||
| Jun 9, 2017 at 3:03 | comment | added | Astara | BTW -- using "-C" will slow down your connection if your link is fast enough because compression takes time. "-C" might benefit 100Mb, but likely harm 1Gb, and certainly harm 10Gb. It's also the case that 'ssh' will harm your throughput -- as will any encryption over fast links. If you have a direct-connection between computers or a secure internal-linkage, go direct with your X connection over TCP:6000. You'll get a noticeable speed improvement. | |
| Jun 8, 2017 at 16:04 | answer | added | virtex | timeline score: 55 | |
| Jun 8, 2017 at 15:46 | vote | accept | user129186 | ||
| Jun 8, 2017 at 15:10 | comment | added | Kamil Maciorowski | Trivia: Xpra offers an interesting approach. | |
| Jun 8, 2017 at 14:31 | answer | added | Tonny | timeline score: 177 | |
| Jun 8, 2017 at 14:18 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jun 13, 2017 at 3:06 | |||||
| Jun 8, 2017 at 13:33 | review | First posts | |||
| Jun 8, 2017 at 13:52 | |||||
| Jun 8, 2017 at 13:26 | history | asked | user129186 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |