Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!decwrl!vixie!asylum!karl
From: karl@asylum.SF.CA.US (Karl Auerbach)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Efficiency (or lack thereof) of ASN.1. Was: Re: What is the IAB?
Message-ID: <11946@asylum.SF.CA.US>
Date: 6 Jun 90 05:04:16 GMT
References: <23825@bellcore.bellcore.com> <9006030129.AA00899@psi.com>
Reply-To: karl@asylum.UUCP (Karl Auerbach)
Organization: The Asylum; Belmont, CA
Lines: 26

In article <9006030129.AA00899@psi.com> schoff@PSI.COM ("Martin Lee Schoffstall") writes:

>About every six months there seems to be a little chinese fire drill,
>it would appear initated by some of the iconic figures of the Internet,
>who talk about performance problems with X,Y,Z areas of SNMP/ASN.1.
>All of them have been proven false, and without merit.

I've often thought Chinese Fire Drills were fun.  Consequently:

I've worked with X.409 and ASN.1 for rather a few years now.  And it
can be a real pig.  In my SNMP code, my profilers indicate that an
overly large portion of the of cycles are spent in the ASN.1
encoder/decoder.  Maybe my code is inefficient -- although I doubt it.
It's just that while ASN.1 is good for representing things like
electronic mail/mixed-media mail and stuff, it is really a bad choice
for fast transactional things.

(Actually my complaint isn't so much against ASN.1 as it is against
the BER [Basic Encoding Rules].  A few months ago there was an article
in the the SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review about an improved,
alternative BER.)

It is my opinion that the TCP/IP community would be wise to avoid
ASN.1 for any but its (original) purpose: electronic mail.

				--karl--