Is there a frame drop option in X11Forwarding?

I'm running a computer vision model on a headless remote VM (Ubuntu 16.04) over X11Forwarding with good ol' Putty and Xming as my Windows X Server.

All is well but seems there is no frame drop if the client-server bandwidth can't keep up, which means my application is slowed down and only renders a few frames a second when it can do hundreds if bandwidth is plenty.

Is there a force frame drop option built into X11 forwarding, and if there is, how do i turn it on?

3 Answers
3

I highly recommend Xpra for this sort of use-case: not only does it provide the ability to disconnect and reconnect to X applications running on a remote host, it also supports a variety of image encodings and window refresh settings to provide a decent experience in different circumstances.

It has a native Windows client so it should be easy enough to set up. You’ll need to install it on the remote VM too, but that’s as easy as apt install xpra on Ubuntu.

apt install xpra

According to this related question, looks like X11Forwarding
isn't the best option for graphics intesive applications, as the X11 protocol wasn't designed with bitmap drawing performance in mind.

X11Forwarding

It basically sends drawing instructions to the network, which is "all good" if we're talking about a couple of windows with text, but it's obviously overkill for millions of pixels changing every frame, expecially when network experiences high latency/jitter/packet loss.

As suggested in the answer to the question mentioned, you could try x2go
and see if it fits your needs.

EDIT as per comment

If x2go won't do, you can try VNC which looks like has frame dropping capabilities. For example, I use x11vnc for connecting to my desktop from
a remote connection with x11vnc -display :0 -auth .Xauthority which hooks to my display.

x2go

VNC

x11vnc

x11vnc -display :0 -auth .Xauthority

Don't know if it would work with Xming but you can give it a try.

Xming

The pure X11 protocol does not lend well itself for guaranteeing transmission, and much over SSH.

I recommend NoMachine. It can do bandwidth compression and network optimization. It also has clients for Mac, Windows and Linux.

PS. NoMachine has the free and the paid versions. I always used the free.

See NoMachine

For virtual desktops (case a) the X11 vector graphics mode
(previously known as “lightweight” mode) is enabled by default. This
method reduces the bandwidth usage (and the HW requirements because is
less CPU intensive) on both client and server by optimizing the X11
protocol by means of compression techniques, round trip suppression
and cache algorithms.

The X11 vector graphics mode is convenient to avoid loss of image
quality and can be useful when working with traditional GUIs or large
amount of text, but it's not suggested for multimedia contents or
applications with many graphical effects.

More about the X11 vector graphics mode:
https://www.nomachine.com/AR02L00779

For connections to the physical desktop or when the X11 vector
graphics mode is disabled for virtual desktops (case b) NoMachine
implements the display protocol using a combination of video and image
encoding based on standard codecs and a number of techniques developed
by NoMachine itself.

It also implements a network adaptive display quality technique. This
means that NoMachine will automatically try to reduce the display
quality when it detects that the network is congested. Purpose of this
mechanism is to keep the session responsive through all the different
network conditions.

More about finding the most suitable configuration for multimedia
playing:

https://www.nomachine.com/AR01M00832

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