Samba Performance vs. X-Windows/Telnet

[Louis Mandelstam]

On Thu, 23 Oct 1997, Robin J. Cox wrote:

> However, it seems lately (especially in the afternoons) the
> performance via the samba mount is very slow; I type a key in
> the editor and it takes about 2 seconds for it to come back.
> 
> I do not see this degradation when connecting to the same
> machine through an xterm window or using the vi editor, i.e.,
> the slowness comes via the mounting I believe.

Samba is a file serving system - it allows you to access file and printers
which are located on another computer.

In your case, this means the application software is running on your
Windows PC's CPU and RAM, but the files are on the Samba server.

When you press a key, it is received and handled by the application
program running on your Windows machine.  Samba has nothing to do with it.


The X Windows System, as well as telnet, are remote user interface
systems.  The application software runs in the CPU and RAM of the remote
machine, and only the user interface runs on your Windows PC.  When you
press a key, it is transmitted over the network to the x client program
running on the server, which then sends the display updates over the
network to your PC.


If you are finding that using X is faster than using Samba, it is because
the Sun server is able to process your session faster than your Windows PC
is, despite the fact that the network sits in your path twice.

The fact that you are even comparing software running in Windows and
software running in SunOS/Solaris seems to suggest that you are using
different software than the group of users using X.  Does this make for a
fair comparison in this context?

Are the other users perhaps using some kind of Windows emulation such as
WABI to run the same application as you do, but running on the Sun and
displayed using X?

Sound like your PCs need to be upgraded  (or the Sun downgraded, depending
on how you look at it)


Regards

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