Hi Jakob,
I've been using a Sun Ray desktop over a broadband DSL for over 5 months
now. The desktop is actually hosted by Sun's display grid folks, and I
think this kind of hosted service may eventually become something people
can subscribe to (perhaps through an ISP or telco).
I will publish a longer article about the experience shortly, but
here're some brief comments:
Overall, the experience is completely usable for most typical desktop
tasks, i.e., running most desktop applications. As has been noted, there
is a slight latency in screen updates, but you can get used to that, and
it doesn't interfere with usability.
With multimedia applications, such as watching video, the experience is
not as good. It think a future version of the Sun Ray software will
address this issue.
Bandwidth is not going to be a limiting factor in the user experience,
because the SRSS 3.1 uses very little bandwidth. In fact, we measured
that during typical use, the Sun Ray took up only about 20% of the
available bandwidth of a DSL connection ( < 200 Kbps).
Latency is a much bigger issue. It's also more complex. In general, a
fast server will help, since some of the latency may come from the
server's (in)ability to push updates to the client and to process the
protocol commands, not to mention running the desktop apps. It might be
a good idea to run the SRSS on a different server from the server
running the apps and the desktop.
Overall, the experience is really amazing. This thing has a lot of
promise, and especially as I think the Sun Ray communication protocol
may be further optimized in order to provide an improved user experience.
-- Frank
Markolf Gudjons wrote:
Hi Jakob,
On Tue, 18 Oct 2005, Jakob Oestergaard wrote:
Just curious; what is the approximate bandwidth and latency from the
side of the VPN where your SunRay sits to the SRSS ?
I tested it with 1 Mb/s symmetrical and an average latency of around 50
ms.
And how do the screen updaets feel, interactively? (eg. switching
between virtual desktops or other things that require large screen
updates)
There is a difference, but it is entirely usable. Screen refreshs like
switching between desktops show the tiles being updated across the screen,
but it's not a real problem. Playing MP3s using xmms works nicely, with no
dropouts.
I was hoping to be able to use a SunRay at home - I have a 6Mbit
symmetrical line, and I guess a ping of around 20-30 ms.
That should work nicely.
No VPN yet though - will need to get that sorted before I can do any
testing. I'm really curious as to whether that will work.
I see no reason why it shouldn't. Just make sure when selecting your VPN
product that you can use it in network extension mode, meaning you are
able to route traffic from your internal network through the VPN client
and the concentrator into your Ray network.
In the case of the Cisco VPN, this means having to purchase a HW client
because the software client doesn't allow you to do that.
If you (or anyone else who's using SunRays from home broadband
connections) could give a little info on how the desktop "feel" is in
such a setup, I'd greatly appreciate it.
I'd say it's definitely usable.
Hope this helps,
- Markolf
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