[MUD-Dev] Re: [Tech] socket slowdown solved

[J C Lawrence]

On Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:26:06 -0600 
Chris Gray<cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA> wrote:

> Back in August (I was checking the archives), under the thread
> "Ethernet NICS, maximum connections..mud testing", I had indicated a
> performance problem I was having with communication between my
> server and client, when running on the same Linux machine. Very
> little of the CPU time was used, but there was no explanation for
> the slowdown.
...
> ...I came across the
> TCP_NODELAY option to setsockopt for the TCP protocol layer. Since
> the work stuff is UDP, not TCP, that was no help, but I decided to
> try it on my test client and server. Voila! Drastic improvement in
> performance. 

Stevens of course has a nice bit to say about this in his TCP/IP books
(I'd quote but my copies are at work and I'm not).  Vic Metcalfe's
"Programming UNIX Sockets in C - Frequently Asked Questions" also
covers this area, its strictures, the relevant and affecting RFC's,
and implementation concerns fairly well.  Among a great many other
places you can find the FAQ at:

  http://www.softlab.ntua.gr/unix/unix-socket-faq/unix-socket-faq.html

With most of the good stuff from question 2.11 thru 2.17, starting at:

  http://www.softlab.ntua.gr/unix/unix-socket-faq/unix-socket-faq-2.html

Aside: I found the (brief) discussion of out-of-band data streams in
those sections and later questions (cf 5.8) useful for my musings on
error-tolerant protocol designs.

> Now I can get on with real work on my MUD!

Good show!  

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                             Internet: coder at kanga.nu
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...