jas@rtech.UUCP (Jim Shankland) (04/17/86)
Someone recently said in this newsgroup that since the UNIX domain is buggy (no arguments here!), it makes sense to use the Internet domain for IPC on 4.2bsd, even if the communicating processes are not on separate machines. Whoever it was said that this is no more expensive than using the UNIX domain; the software is more robust; and, of course, the application generalizes trivially to run over the network, if you ever want it to. Problem is, according to my measurements, doing 32-byte writes on a stream socket using the UNIX domain is about twice as fast as using the Internet domain. I tried this on a Microvax II running Ultrix, and a CCI Power/6 running CCI's 4.2 port, with the same results. (They've taken all our vanilla 4.2 VAXen away to run VAX/VMS.) The two programs are identical, except for the stuff that sets up the rendezvous. Does anyone have an explanation for this? Is there a trick to making Internet sockets faster, when there's no actual networking involved? I'd like to use the Internet domain for my application, but can't live with that kind of a performance penalty. Jim Shankland ..!ucbvax!mtxinu!\ rtech!jas ..!ihnp4!cpsc6a!/