Xref: utzoo comp.protocols.tcp-ip:2355 comp.lang.c:6987
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!mordor!sri-spam!sri-unix!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C binding interfaces for TCP/IP
Message-ID: <610@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jan 88 06:54:30 GMT
References: <25@vdelta.UUCP> <2168@cognos.UUCP> <7202@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 17

In article <7202@brl-smoke.ARPA>, gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
> In article <2168@cognos.UUCP> jimp@cognos.UUCP (Jim Patterson) writes:
> >In conjunction with RPC, Sun has
> >an excellent protocol called XDR (eXternal Data Representation) ...
> I wouldn't call it "excellent".  A few months back, when I needed to
> ...
> it up in the Sun reference manual and found that it had FAR too much
> overhead for my purposes.  I ended up implementing my own scheme that
> runs much faster.

How can a program run much faster than a PROTOCOL?
The protocol is one thing, the source-code implementation of it that
SUN give away is quite another.
With respect to the protocol, XDR is historically related to Courier,
so there's a fair bit of experience behind the *protocol*.
It may well be a good idea to write one's own implementation of the
protocol, but it is not such a good idea to invent yet another data
conversion protocol.