SUMARY: How do you do X11 over a Modem?

From: Frank Merrow (frank@odetics.com)
Date: Wed Mar 11 1992 - 14:03:45 CST


Hi,

There seemed to be lots of interest in a question I asked recently:

"How do you run X11 over a Modem?"

These seemed to be the best three answers . . . Note that NOBODY said
"oh that is easy we are doing that here". However one of the replys
below indicated "I am working on that now".

Good Luck

--

In comp.sys.sun.misc you write:

>Hi,

>I use X11 on my sparc at work. I will soon have a T3000 at home to >talk PEP mode (when the upgrade comes out) to our Trailblazer Plus >modems at work. Any way to get my Sparc to recognize my 486 at >home as a remote system via X11? Seems like I need more software at >work as well as home. What are all the pieces called?

I am at the very moment doing a variation on that theme.

THE CAST OF CHARACTERS:

PC/TCP A TCP/IP protocol stack from FTP PC/PPP A PPP module for the above EXCEEDP/PLUS v3.0 An X server package for DOS from Hummingbird EXCEEDP/W v3.0 An alternative - X server package for MeSsy-Windows

That's the PC side. I presume you already have a suitable X11 setup on your sparc (since you said so). There's really no reason to choose PC/TCP over any other suitable protocol stack, really, except that they do support PPP. I am going to give the PPP setup a thorough shakedown this week sometime.

The X server is a program that siezes your PC's keyboard, mouse and video, and interfaces with the protocol stack to talk TCP/IP to the various clients. Hummingbird supports a variety of startup modes, including XDMCP (3 ways), Passive startup (meaning you find some other way to bringup an xterm or something), Telnet (starting it doesn't give you a blank screen and a mouse cursor, you get a telnet session. When the first client opens, THEN you get the blank screen, mouse cursor... and one client), and a couple others I probably forgot. It also has a comprehensive set of fonts.

--

SLIP (or PPP) on the Sun side

X-sight (or some similar PC Xserver) SLIP for the PC....make sure the Xserver can deal with whatever one you get (most can dela with the Clarkson.edu drivers I think).

I'm not sure a trailblazer can deal with the asynch that well? I thought they were optimized for batch file transfers...but I don't have one and could easily be wrong.

--

Hi,

I use X11 on my sparc at work. I will soon have a T3000 at home to talk PEP mode (when the upgrade comes out) to our Trailblazer Plus modems at work. Any way to get my Sparc to recognize my 486 at home as a remote system via X11? Seems like I need more software at work as well as home. What are all the pieces called?

I am trying something called Xvision from StarNet which purports to provide X11 capability on a DOS machine via Serial Line IP (SLIP) (as well as Ethernet and TCP/IP) The newer version of SLIP is called PPP and provides better compression? Anyway, I have not been able to get SLIP working but could let you know whan and if (within the next month or so). I do not know if your home machine is DOS or UNIX.

SLIP and PPP for SPARCs are relatively easy to add - any ftp site has them available. A kernel mod is needed but it is easy to do.

I am not sure how well the Trailblazer will work. I tried a V.32 modem (Multitech) with NCD's proprietary Xremote (customized SLIP?) and they specifically mentioned that you needed a fulll duplex modem. For Xremote, the X performance was slow but OK for everything except Framemaker. Apparently each character under Frame is a bit map and the serial line gets a bit slow.

A contact at StarNet said that X performance over SLIP is dismal, however, since the V.32 modem (MultiTech) does its own compression and I did not see much difference with Xremote between compressed and non-compressed mode, I am hopeful that X will be at least useable with SLIP.

Let me know what you get working.

-- =================================================================== = Frank Merrow (Home) (714) 455-3096 = = Odetics Inc, Broadcast Division (Work) (714) 772-1000 Ext 3860 = = 1515 S. Manchester Avenue (Fax) (714) 535-8532 = = Anaheim, CA 92802 (Net) frank@odetics.com = ===================================================================



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