computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, e ...

, LBX, or Low Bandwidth X, is a protocol to use the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

over

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

links with low

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

and high latency. It was introduced in X11R6.3 ("Broadway") in 1996, but never achieved wide use. It was disabled by default as of

X.Org Server X.Org Server is the free and open-source implementation of the X Window System display server stewarded by the X.Org Foundation. Implementations of the client-side X Window System protocol exist in the form of ''X11 libraries'', which serve a ...

7.1, and was removed for version 7.2. X was originally implemented for use with the

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...

and

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuable ...

on the same machine or the same

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...

. By 1996, the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

was becoming popular, and X's performance over narrow, slow links was problematic. LBX ran as a

proxy server In computer networking, a proxy server is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a client requesting a resource and the server providing that resource. Instead of connecting directly to a server that can fulfill a request ...

({{mono, lbxproxy). It cached commonly used information — connection setup, large window properties, font metrics, keymaps and so on — and compressed data transmission over the network link. LBX was never widely deployed as it did not offer significant speed improvements. The slow links it was introduced to help were typically insecure, and

RFB RFB or RfB may refer to: * Radio Free Brooklyn, a community freeform Internet radio station in Brooklyn, NY * Redox Flow battery, a kind of battery that uses a liquid electrolyte that flows through tanks, unlike Dry Cells with solid electrolytes, ...

(

VNC Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a graphical desktop-sharing system that uses the Remote Frame Buffer protocol (RFB) to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard and mouse input from one computer to another, relaying the g ...

) over a

secure shell The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution. SSH applications are based on a ...

connection — which includes compression — proved faster than LBX, and also provided session resumption. Finally, it was shown that greater speed improvements to X could be obtained for ''all'' networked environments with replacement of X's antiquated font system as part of the new composited graphics system, along with care and attention to application and

widget toolkit A widget toolkit, widget library, GUI toolkit, or UX library is a library or a collection of libraries containing a set of graphical control elements (called ''widgets'') used to construct the graphical user interface (GUI) of programs. Most widg ...

design, particularly care to avoid network round trips and hence latency.

References

lbxproxy(1)
(

man page A man page (short for manual page) is a form of software documentation usually found on a Unix or Unix-like operating system. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and ev ...

)
Design and Implementation of LBX: An Experiment Based Standard
(.

tar Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. "a dark brown or black bit ...

. gz archive file) (

Keith Packard Keith Packard (born April 16, 1963) is a software developer, best known for his work on the X Window System. Packard is responsible for many X extensions and technical papers on X. He has been heavily involved in the development of X since the l ...

, Eighth Annual X Technical Conference, ''The X Resource'' no. 9, O'Reilly & Associates, 1994)
Broadway/Xweb FAQ
(broadwayinfo.com)

(Paul D. Smith, 11 December 1997)

(Keith Packard)
X Window System Network Performance
(Keith Packard and Jim Gettys, 2003)
Design and Implementation of the X Rendering Extension
(Keith Packard, 2001 History of software X Window System Proxy servers X servers Remote desktop

See also

References