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From: rgc@wam.umd.edu (Ross Garrett Cutler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: X vs DSP network traffic
Message-ID: <1990Oct24.191726.23322@wam.umd.edu>
Date: 24 Oct 90 19:17:26 GMT
Sender: usenet@wam.umd.edu (USENET Posting)
Reply-To: rgc@wam.umd.edu (Ross Garrett Cutler)
Organization: University of Maryland at College Park
Lines: 27

Hello,
    Not intending to beat this drum till it has no sound, but could someone
please explain to me *why* X is such a network hog and DPS *isn't*.  I've
used X11 extensively, and it is true -- it does take up a lot of bandwidth.
But so would DPS, I would think.  I mean, there are high level commands
in both to draw lines, circles, tiles, ...; just because X is at a lower
level doesn't mean it's inefficient.

And while I'm on the subject, the biggest network hog is diskless workstations.
I read an article in DEC News that said X terminals take up ~1/6 the traffic
of diskless workstations on the average.  I've seen similar figures elsewhere
as well.  And Bill Joy of Sun says that Sun won't sell X terminals because
X bogs down a LAN; he really means that Sun can make more money selling
SLCs and a server ($$$) to support them.

I'm all for NeXT and DPS (I use one every day).  But let's
not accuse X for being a hog (indeed: our DEC VT1200 runs X nicely, but
the 34010 inside of it doesn't have enough horsepower to run DEC's DPS
extension to X -- you would need a FAST chip for DPS processing, aside
from the overhead of X).

Thanks for any replies (no flames, *please*).
--
Please email -- I'll summarize.
Ross Cutler
University of Maryland, College Park
Internet: rgc@wam.umd.edu