Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!noc.near.net!uunet!wyvern!taylor!mark
From: mark@taylor.uucp (Mark A. Davis)
Subject: Re: Blinking Cursor in Xterm???
Organization: Lake Taylor Hospital Computer Services
Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 12:45:43 GMT
Message-ID: <1993May19.124543.1948@taylor.uucp>
References: <1993May16.213936.6904@wariat.org> <me.737715054@dude> <1993May18.130845.6859@taylor.uucp> <1tbpi9INNfp3@early-bird.think.com>
Lines: 25

#reply#barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:

#reply#>In article <1993May18.130845.6859@taylor.uucp> mark@taylor.uucp (Mark A. Davis) writes:
#reply#>>You are stuck in a distributed system feedback loop!  What if you are on an
#reply#>>Xterminal or running xterm over the net to another machine?  That is when the
#reply#>>load problems occur.  If you had a machine with 20 Xterminals attached and
#reply#>>they all had blinking cursors in xterm's, this could represent a considerable
#reply#>>ethernet bandwidth waste.

#reply#>Ethernet certainly has enough bandwidth for a few blinking cursors.  My
#reply#>Lisp Machine blinks the cursor twice a second and updates the time in the
#reply#>status line every second.  This uses under 1K bytes/second, or about .1% of
#reply#>the bandwidth of Ethernet.  A hundred of them on a single ethernet might be
#reply#>a problem, but a couple dozen should be fine.

Granted it's nothing to loose sleep over, but this is Ethernet's tragic flaw:
the more activity (especially lots of tiny activity), the more collisions
happen and the performance gets exponentially worse...  I am just now
opposing ANY kind of waste of bandwidth under Ethernet.  Although in a polling
system it would not be so bad.
#sig# -- 
#sig#   /--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
#sig#   | Mark A. Davis    | Lake Taylor Hospital | Norfolk, VA (804)-461-5001x431 |
#sig#   | Sys.Administrator|  Computer Services   | mark@taylor / mark@taylor.UUCP |
#sig#   \--------------------------------------------------------------------------/
