Re: Why Worry over Bandwidth
> We have a text application that runs on Sparc Solaris 2.4 and Online > 7.11UC1. Users run it by telnetting from a pc into the Unix box (over a > lan and wan) and it connects thru shared memory. We are in the process > of convertting the app to client server. Now here is my question: when > your telnetting, everytime a user (let's assume this user is going over > the wan) hits a keystroke it goes over the wan, to the unix server and > then back to the pc but in client server everything is local to the pc > until the user saves or update a record (let's forget about queueries > for now). So why are some people worried about bandwidth? I have the > feeling I'm missing something so please tell me. The thing you might be missing is the relatively large gap in time between keystrokes. Even a pretty fast typist will not get more than ten keystrokes per second through. Transferring a small record across the network will easily exceed that. Furthermore, unless your application is *extremely* network concious, you will typically send the entire record across the network when you update, even if you've only changed one field. Also, you can't forget about queries: what often happens if you use client/server is that you send many records across the network at once, and if more than one person is retrieving/processing 10000 records... <boom> I'm sure some detailed analysis from the other contributors will point out other issues (and flaws in my reasoning...:) -- Ciao, Billy +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Billy Wheeler Junior Programmer / Director The West Solutions Group | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | (E) billy@west.co.za (U) http://www.west.co.za/billy.html | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | WARNING: sending me junk-email will be interpreted as granting permission to | | bomb your offices and machine-gun your children. | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+