Nagle's Alogrithm

[Quentin Stafford-Fraser]

I've added the following note to the FAQ.

Q. I get an error message about 'disabling Nagle's algorithm'. 
What does it mean?

Nagle's algorithm is an optimisation which is used most of the
time on socket connections. Under certain circumstances it batches up
lots of small transmissions into bigger ones, to make better use of
the bandwidth.  VNC relies on small transmissions (like mouse
movements) getting through quickly, so we turn it off using the
TCP_NODELAY option.  If this causes an error, it is a problem with
your TCP/IP stack. In particular, Microsoft have broken this with NT
service pack 6, and we strongly recommend that you stick to Service
Pack 5. In a future version of VNC we will pop this up as a warning
without making it fatal.


In the meantime, if you have a compiler, you can edit the
SetSocketOptions in ClientConnection.cpp to pop up a message box instead
of raising an exception.

Quentin

-- 
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Dr Quentin Stafford-Fraser
AT&T Laboratories Cambridge
http://www.uk.research.att.com/~qsf

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