high bandwith on ubuntu guest

[barnett]

Hi,

I'm migrating from one home server to another, so currently I have two vbox hosts (4.1.2 and 4.2.6) on separate machines - both hosts are ubuntu server (11.04 and 12.10).

The old host has a winxp guest and the new host has an ubuntu desktop (12.10) guest. I'm accessing them from work (win7) via MS Remote Desktop. My firewall at home is pfSense and its web gui shows me the inbound and outbound bandwidth usage (comcast cable).

The winxp guest works okay (bandwidth looks normal), but the ubuntu guest is very sluggish and I can see the outbound bandwidth is maxing out whenever my ubuntu guest session is active (non minimized) even if it's just sitting there. When I minimize the Remote desktop window at my desk here at work, the outbound bandwidth usage reported by my firewall goes back to normal. The MS Remote Desktop settings for the two guests are identical.

Is there something I can do in either vbox or ubuntu to get the remote session to quit maxing out my outbound bandwidth?

Thanks!
Barnett

[Perryg]

Use Unity 2D on the 11.* guest. I believe you are out of luck on 12.10 though as it does not have unity 2D
You can adjust the quality setting on your RDP client and help as well.

[barnett]

OK thanks. Sounds like there's no magic setting I wasn't finding. I lowered the color depth and used a black background. Maybe I'll try a different RDP client with more quality control features.

But I gotta believe something is wrong with my setup because otherwise no one would be able to connect to a home ubuntu desktop guest from outside the firewall without it being this slow. That doesn't sound right to me. WinXP is much more responsive.

[Perryg]

Bandwidth = the amount of bytes that is required to paint the guests desktop on your remote screen. Ubuntu 3D or anything with extra weight takes more bandwidth.

[barnett]

Yeah you may be right, but is this a common issue? Maybe people don't access a home system remotely??

I will say when it's just waiting at the logon screen, the bandwidth is low. After I logon it jumps to max. From another machine inside the firewall it's fine.

I'll keep at it.

[noteirak]

What kind of speed are we talking about here?

[Perryg]

Yeah you may be right, but is this a common issue? Maybe people don't access a home system remotely??
I will say when it's just waiting at the logon screen, the bandwidth is low. After I logon it jumps to max. From another machine inside the firewall it's fine.
I'll keep at it.

I do in fact remote into various machines daily. Even had a huge discussion with Ubuntu and their decision to drop 2D from Unity over this very issue.
The best I have found so far is to ditch the Unity DT and use cinnamon, then turn off all special effects. It then becomes usable. The reason the login (splash) screen is adequate is because the effects have not kicked in yet so that should be the indicator to what your issue is as well.

One last offer, I found the X11VNC server to be the fastest on direct remote to Ubuntu but it drops out (dies) on occasion so you need to set it up properly and allow for repeated logins.