Xref: utzoo comp.misc:6633 comp.sys.hp:2489 comp.sys.apollo:3141 comp.protocols.nfs:293
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!boulder!carla
From: carla@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Carla Mowers)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.sys.hp,comp.sys.apollo,comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Re: A Comparison of Commerical RPC Protocols
Summary: response from Netwise
Keywords: RPC Apollo Sun Netwise
Message-ID: <10258@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 25 Jul 89 15:45:11 GMT
References: <6567@joshua.athertn.Atherton.COM> <951@anise.acc.com>
Reply-To: carla@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Carla Mowers)
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Lines: 35

The results presented in Joshua Levy's RPC paper are based on data that is
now nearly nine months old. An article I've posted to comp.misc contains
some performance measurements based on new releases of both the Netwise
and Apollo products. A new Sun product has not been released since Joshua's
measurements were made.

The article contains data collected in early June of 1989 by Netwise. All
source code used for these measurements may be obtained by sending a request
to "tony@wldrdg.UUCP". Please direct all other questions and comments to
this account as well. This article is being posted from this account due to
technical difficulties with the USENET feed at Netwise.

Of course, you should probably take any numbers presented here with a large
grain of salt. What one party measures doesn't necessarily correlate well to
the environment another is interested in. The leap-frog nature of the game
means that any measurement won't be valid long. Internally, we have a next-
release prototype that improves on the performance of our currently shipping
product as, I'm sure, do the other vendors.

The suggestion from Lars Poulsen that ASN.1 encodings lead to poor performance
isn't necessarily true.  Our performance numbers show us approaching Sun's RPC
in several areas (opaque buffers still need work), and our current prototype
is, at worst, 2% slower than Sun in the categories we tested. The flexibility
of ASN.1 can actually be an advantage. Our prototype exploits this for large
buffers. By using a longer length form (one byte longer) we can get the ASN.1
buffer aligned such that bcopy() can make the transfer from the user's buffer
to the transmission buffer much more quickly.

I believe you'll find the posted information basically lacking in hype.
If you view this as a commercial use of the net, I'm sorry. I'm simply
responding to an article that contained outdated information regarding one
of our products.

Tony Andrews		Netwise, Inc.  2477 55th St.  Boulder, CO 80301
Phone:303-442-8280	UUCP: onecom!wldrdg!tony