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From: george@ditmela.oz (George Michaelson)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Efficiency (or lack thereof) of ASN.1. Was: Re: What is the IAB?
Message-ID: <11866@ditmela.oz>
Date: 10 Jun 90 02:33:11 GMT
References: <9006092155.AA05105@psi.com>
Organization: CSIRO Division of Information Technology, Australia
Lines: 24


If an ASN.1 en/de coder is built to a specific and known subset of
ASN.1 which is what at least one message about SNMP implied, is it
any wonder it runs faster than a en/de coder written to try and handle
an *arbitrary* ASN.1 description? 

The same goes for the BER surely, if you know in advance what specific
sequences to expect you can afford to write an optimal package to read
and write those sequences, nasty hacks like pre-defined fixed buffers
that you write 2-3 bytes into and chuck onto the net without actually
"walking" all the ASN.1 involved.

ISODE is more than just SNMP support. If somebody writes fast generic
ASN.1 nobody will complain. meantime, its better than nothing. 

How does ISODE compare to Huitema's ASN.1 stuff for speed? ditto the
EAN code? Retix? is there are basis for benchmarking ASN.1 and BER
code?

George
-- 
ACSnet: ggm@brolga.cc.uq.oz                    Phone: +61 7 377 4079
Postal: George Michaelson, Prentice Computer Centre
          Queensland University, St Lucia, QLD 4067 Australia