I certainly haven't used it that much, but I never felt like the connection quality was a huge concern for a usable DE. It's something like 30 years old now isn't it?
When the updates are occasional, fine, but when you call make or run something which updates fast/creates a lot of output, things get hairy, quick. Even on local networks with a couple of connections. Been there, tried that, experienced it all.
X2Go transmits the image, compresses it, and can work with much slower and higher latency network connections. It can also resume sessions.