Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!mailrus!ncar!boulder!carla
From: carla@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Carla Mowers)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.misc
Subject: Re: A Comparison of Commerical RPC Protocols
Keywords: RPC Apollo Sun Netwise
Message-ID: <10326@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 28 Jul 89 17:45:34 GMT
References: <6567@joshua.athertn.Atherton.COM> <951@anise.acc.com> <10258@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <44a7f591.1d6d5@apollo.COM>
Reply-To: tony@wldrdg.UUCP (Tony Andrews)
Organization: Netwise, Inc.
Lines: 30

Nat Mishkin writes:
> Some grains of salt:  The data reported in your paper was obtained by
> running client and server on the same machine.  I have to take a fair
> bit of exception with this.  I would imagine that the time to make a
> remote call is dominated (or at least significantly determined by) the
> networking costs (i.e. the cost of sending and receiving network messages).
> The cost of sending intra-machine network messages can be assumed to
> be roughly zero (relative to the inter-machine cost, anyway).  Your tests
> may thus have measured the relative speeds of things that are a small
> fraction of the total cost of making a remote call.

Let's assume that our times are skewed in that the data transmission times
are lower than in the average user's environment. This would effectively
magnify all other times involved in making a remote procedure call. In
general, for a portable RPC product, these are the only times one has
control over from one network environment to another. So I would claim that
the comparison is still useful.

Further, if we remove data transmission times, most of what remains involves
data marshalling. Consider how the products were affected in that respect.
Sun had an advantage in that the measurements were made on a Motorola-based
system, whose byte ordering tends to be favored by the XDR encodings.
Apollo had an advantage in that the tests were made in a homogeneous setting,
eliminating the need for any data conversions. Netwise uses ASN.1 encodings
which tend to not favor any particular processor, and are not improved by
a homogeneous environment. So, if anything, we've magnified our own
weaknesses more than those of Sun or Apollo.

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