[Spice-devel] Unfair comparisons with RDP

[Alon Levy]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 02:01:48PM -0400, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-06-30 at 10:10 +0300, Yaniv Kaul wrote:
> > On 06/30/2011 05:33 AM, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2011-06-29 at 20:22 -0400, Andrew Cathrow wrote:
> > >>
> > >> ----- Original Message -----
> > >>> <snip>
> > >>> Hello, all. I've been using both RDP via TSPlus and SPICE for over a
> > >>> week now and the practical world results at least in my mode of
> > >>> operation are becoming clear. SPICE does handle major screen refreshes
> > >>> better, e.g., monstrous graphics or continuously pasting a full line
> > >>> of
> > >>> text in a full screen notepad. Of course, SPICE is a clear winner when
> > >>> it comes to video though still not practically usable on low bandwidth
> > >>> links.
> > >>>
> > >>> However, RDP is trouncing SPICE in the more common day to day tasks
> > >>> involving small screen updates. For example, every time I open or
> > >>> switch
> > >>> my screen to LibreOffice, the tool bar icons seems to pain one at a
> > >>> time
> > >>> in SPICE where as they appear all at once in TSPlus. Document
> > >>> scrolling
> > >>> is more immediate and smoother. Surprisingly, when I open the PuTTY
> > >>> dialog in SPICE, it paints in sections whereas TSPlus appears all at
> > >>> once.
> > >> You'll really need to post some real details here - from versions of qemu+spice server that you're using along with the qemu command line syntax, host OS, hardware details through to what's running in the guest, driver versions, etc.
> > >>
> > >> I've never seen RDP trounce spice, but if it does, then we need some scientific information on the environment so we can diagnose and assist.
> > >>
> > > <snip>
> > > Very happy to do so as we really do want SPICE to become our protocol of
> > > choice.  I believe I've posted up our details before but will do so
> > > again.
> > 
> > Would you be so kind as to capture the Spice traffic (using 
> > tcpdump/wireshark) and send it over?
> > Specifically:
> > 1. Please capture from start - before the Spice client connects to the 
> > server.
> > 2. Ensure you catch full sized packets (-s XXXX - could be 1500 most 
> > likely, when using tcpdump)
> > 3. Save into file (-w /tmp/file.pcap when using tcpdump)
> > 4. Please compress and send / let me know where I can pick it up from.
> > 
> > I suggest you have only the scenario of connecting to the VM and opening 
> > putty, which you complain is slow.
> > Hopefully it'll give us some clue.
> > TIA,
> > Y.
> <snip>
> Certainly.  On their way in a couple of moments.  If anyone else would
> like a copy, please let me know off list.
> 
> I took three traces.  The first was our regular SPICE connection.  Then
> I took a trace performing the same activities using xfreerdp and TSPlus.

Is the vm a windows or linux one?

> Once again, it was much more responsive and it transferred roughly 1/5th
> of the data SPICE did.  I also noticed it said it did not support 32 bit
> pixel depth and reverted to 16 although it looked much better than 16.
> 
> I then thought, our iSCSI disk access is slow so maybe it was a matter
> that all the data was now cached plus the 16 vs 32 bit pixel depth, so I
> took another SPICE trace with color-depth=16. It was still much slower
> and transferred many times the amount of data.  I'll paste in the timing
> notes that are included in the trace tarball.  One can get a anecdotal
> sense of how much snappier RDS is from the time lines on doing the exact
> same activities:
> 
> SPICEStart-20110630 sequence
> 0 seconds:	start spicec --host 172.x.x.124 --port 5900 --color-depth 32
> -to previously painted screen
> 20:		toggle to full screen
> 45:		display desktop, i.e., minimize all open applications
> 64:		Open PuTTY
> 81:		Paint existing LibreOffice document, i.e., restore from minimize
> 104:		Start new LibreOffice application after closing previous one
> 120:		Open LibreOffice document (slowly paints toolbar icons)
> 136:		toggle away from full screen
> 
> Total bytes transfered: 2,687,446
> 
> 
> TSPlusStart-20110630 sequence
> 0 seconds:	start xfreerdp -d MyDomain -a 32 -x lan -z -u myid -f
> --plugin cliprdr --plugin rdpsnd 172.29.1.133 & - said it did not
> support 32 bit pixel depth and reverted to 16 although it looked much
> better than 16 bit
> 7:		login
> 17:		display desktop, i.e., minimize all open applications
> 28:		Open PuTTY
> 42:		Paint existing LibreOffice document, i.e., restore from minimize
> 58:		Start new LibreOffice application after closing previous one
> 75:		Open LibreOffice document (slowly paints toolbar icons)
> 85:		toggle away from full screen
> 
> Total bytes transfered: 562242
> 
> 
> SPICEStart-16-20110630 sequence
> 0 seconds:	start spicec --host 172.x.x.124 --port 5900 --color-depth 16
> (Warning: no factory for 8 - I don't know what that message means)
harmless, it means spicec is not compiled with smartcard channel support.

> 15:		toggle to full screen
> 39:		login
> 61:		display desktop, i.e., minimize all open applications
> 75:		Open PuTTY
> 92:		Paint existing LibreOffice document, i.e., restore from minimize
> 114:		Start new LibreOffice application after closing previous one
> 138:		Open LibreOffice document (slowly paints toolbar icons)
> 153:		toggle away from full screen
> 
> Total bytes transfered: 3643123 (I assume this is higher than 32bit
> because of the screen resolution detection when logging in)
> 
> 
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