Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!vixie!asylum!karl
From: karl@asylum.SF.CA.US (Karl Auerbach)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Efficiency (or lack thereof) of ASN.1.
Message-ID: <12079@asylum.SF.CA.US>
Date: 14 Jun 90 02:15:22 GMT
References: <9006092155.AA05105@psi.com> <11866@ditmela.oz> <8020@mirsa.inria.fr>
Reply-To: karl@asylum.UUCP (Karl Auerbach)
Organization: The Asylum; Belmont, CA
Lines: 17

In article <8020@mirsa.inria.fr> huitema@jerry.inria.fr (Christian Huitema) writes:
>A few comment on the efficiency of ASN.1. We did quite a lot of work on
>that at INRIA

>* the handling of the strings is comparable to what can be found in
>other syntaxes: the coding of the tag and length field may take 20
>instructions instead of 1 or 2, but it is outweighted by the copying of
>the string itself, which is syntax independant. The decoding can however
>be made much longer if your partner insists on passing its strings as
>``sequences of segments''.

I've found that constructorization of strings can add substaintially
to the overhead of the decoder.  Have you considered this in your numbers?

Thanks for your comments.

				--karl--