Terminal output from ssh much slower than putty

Erik Vigmostad erik@artselect.com
Fri Mar 7 00:10:00 GMT 2003


I'm not sure how to "use RXVT" or what RXVT is!

Randall R Schulz wrote:
> Erik,
> 
> Cygwin's "terminal" I/O speed varies considerably depending on two 
> primary and independent choices: Console (Windows character subsystem) 
> vs. RXVT and CYGWIN with vs. without "tty".
> 
> In my home directory:
> 
> % find |wc -l
>    4681
> 
> % find -type d |wc -l
>     180
> 
> % find -type f |wc -l
>    4457
> 
> 
> Console w/o CYGWIN=tty:
> % time /bin/ls -lRF
> 
> real    0m17.703s
> user    0m0.733s
> sys     0m3.874s
> 
> 
> Console w/ CYGWIN=tty
> % time /bin/ls -lRF
> 
> real    0m37.150s
> user    0m0.561s
> sys     0m4.062s
> 
> 
> RXVT w/o CYGWIN=tty
> % time /bin/ls -lRF
> 
> real    0m4.964s
> user    0m0.702s
> sys     0m3.827s
> 
> 
> RXVT w/ CYGWIN=tty
> % time /bin/ls -lRF
> 
> real    0m4.864s
> user    0m0.515s
> sys     0m3.999s
> 
> 
> I made several "priming" runs before capturing this timing information.
> 
> This test emphasizes scrolling speed, I believe. I think RXVT uses an 
> algorithm that skips ahead when large volumes of output are being 
> produced. This produces faster results (with the same end product on the 
> screen--it's just the scrolling that skips ahead) but the visual 
> appearance is discernibly less "continuous" than is the console mode.
> 
> So, if raw output speed as characterized by scrolling is the issue, use 
> RXVT. If your criteria are different (say, cursor addressing as 
> characterized by Emacs, Vim or Info), then I'd do some tests on your own 
> to find out what works best for you.
> 
> Note, too, that for some applications, most notably Emacs, you _must_ 
> set the "tty" option in the CYGWIN environment variable. This maximizes 
> Unix tty compatibility. That option clearly imposes a much bigger 
> performance hit in the Windows console than in RXVT.
> 
> 
> Randall Schulz
> 
> 
> At 05:55 2003-03-05, Erik Vigmostad wrote:
> 
>> Is there some way to speedup the output to my terminal?  I would like 
>> to use cygwin for ssh'g to various servers, but it is so much slower 
>> that using putty that I can't.
> 
> 
> 



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