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Poor Screen Sharing performance - problem reproduced

I have finally figured out how to reproduce an issue that has recently appeared on a Mavericks Server where some of my users who work remotely via the Screen Sharing app have been complaining about poor screen performance. A number of my users make use of Apple's build in Screen Sharing app to log into their workspaces and work remotely. However, some of them complain of very poor screen performance (lagging curser, slow redraws of windows, etc). I found this puzzling in that each time I logged in to do the same thing, performance seeded good (I chalked it up to "the user mush be on a slow network connection).


However, I finally got the problem to reproduced. Here is what I found: If user X is logged in, and user X's workspace is displayed on the remote machine, user X can work efficiently using Screen Sharing. However, if user Y's workspace is displayed on the remote machine, then user X's experience while working remotely with Screen Sharing is much degraded.


For some reason, the performance of Screen Sharing while working remotely is good only while the remote user's desktop is being displayed on the remote machine. The problem seems to be how graphics resources are allocated (prioritized) by the OS, if high priority being given to the workspace that is displayed on the remote machine.


Does anyone have ideas as to how to fix this? Would running Apple Remote Desktop make any difference?

Posted on Dec 6, 2013 8:06 AM

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1 reply

Dec 6, 2013 11:35 AM in response to krw

You've got a good reproducer, and a good indication of how the systems are being used. If you have access, contact Apple Support, Enterprise Support, or log a bug via Apple Bug Reporter.


It wouldn't surprise me that there's a virtual frame buffer lurking here somewhere, and that it's slower than the hardware used for the display.


In general and FWIW, folks have been complaining about the load on timesharing systems going back into the 1970s, and quite probably before. At its core, these sorts of timesharing complaints are the foundation of the Unix workstation and of the IBM PC businesses. One user, one box.

Poor Screen Sharing performance - problem reproduced

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