[drats_users] Fwd: D-RATS - Messages Store & Forward Info

[Debbie Fligor]

On May 27, 2011, at 6:55, Jonathan Naylor wrote:

> 
> Why do people in the 21st century insist on running systems without GUIs? Unless your server/PC is terminally old, then running a GUI is no big deal in terms of CPU or memory usage.

It is a big deal in terms of bandwidth though. 

> 
> Professionally we run many remote systems, both Linux and Windows, with GUIs and use VNC to access them, and it makes life so much easier to administer and look at the software status online.

I do a lot of things with VNC/Remote Desktop/Apple Remote Desktop and I can say absolutely that when one end of the connection is on the other end of a DSL line at 384k/1500k it is annoying, and when I'm trying to do the admin of one them over a 3G cellular connection on my iPad it is 1) painfully slow and 2) eats bandwidth very fast which ups my cost a lot compared to using ssh. 

When I'm at work and everything is 100M or 1G Ethernet then VNC, etc. is awesome and I don't usually bother with ssh instead.  Where I live a 384/1500 DSL line is the only option in my price range (T1 is the only other low-latency option at all that I'm aware of).  When I'm on the road and using 3G things that have to be done vi VNC become nearly useless if they are complex.

> 
> If this were 1991 I would agree about the need for non-GUI software, but it isn't, and people should move on.


For the same reason that I'd rather get a 1 paragraph notice in the text of an email than as an attached MS Word file, I would rather be able to use things that don't loose functionality in a cli version. It's faster and takes less bandwidth to view/use it.  d-rats repeater as a non-gui makes perfect sense.  d-rats full featured needs a gui, plain chat doesn't really, but I certainly don't think Dan should spend time on making a different client just for that.

One of the things the USA doesn't have that most of Europe does (in my understanding) is good last-mile network connectivity. I live roughly 15 miles from a major university, where I work in Networking and routinely provide people on campus with 1G and now 10G network connections, and the best service I can buy for my house is 384k up and 1500k down.  There's a major community fiber project underway in the area, but it will only cover a roughly 5 mile radius from downtown, and even then it wont be everywhere.

Of course thats still better than the 1200 to 9600 baud I can do with ham radio :-)

> 
> Jonathan  G4KLX
> 

-debbie, N9DN