Tight v. Hextile on Windoze client

[William Hooper]

Josh Baudhuin said:
> Hi all--new to the list, so sorry if this is a time-worn topic...
>
> Hextile _appears_ to be faster in my (tridia) client, though I read that
> Tight uses much less bandwidth.

Perceived speed is dependant on a lot of things, bandwidth being only one
of them.  Adding more compression can actually increase latency because
you have to add time the compression-decompression stage takes.  There
used to be a page on the TightVNC site comparing different encoding types
(can't find it now).  What ratio of time the transmission takes and the
time the compression takes changes with your available bandwidth. 
Generally if you have a high bandwidth network you don't care as much
about how much bandwidth is used, because compression takes a larger
amount of time than transmission.  On a low bandwidth connection things
are reversed.  It is best to just mess with the encoding settings until
you get a mix that is "fast" for you in your situation.

> Also, I notice that the linux client, tight or hextile, appears to be
> much slower than hextile on Windoze. (I dual boot Linux and XP-Pro, and
> the difference is alarming in the same way as the tight v. hextile is
> for the tridia client.)

Again, there are a number of different variables to consider.  Network
card drivers, color depth, client defaults, etc.  There is a nice (older)
writeup in the FAQ about this:
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/faq.html#q51

--
William Hooper