Re: Re: xAP - The Proposed Architecture Explained...

[David Sussman <davids@xxxxxxx>]

> Wasn't this one of the problems when Doom came out - networks ground
to
> a halt because it was broadcasting lan game info to the entire
network....
> I know you're unlikely to have the same volume of data as in a 3d
game,
> but with normal network traffic too, it all adds up....

Actually Doom was quite efficient, only broadcasting minimum of
information
(player position, etc). It was the quantity of packets that causes most
of
the problems. And as someone who ran away a lot, I suspect I was quite a
big
cause of that 8)



> > The messages are small. A broadcast message travels once on the
wire, 
> > a point-point message once for each device. The efficiency
tradeoff 
> > might not be as straightforward as it looks. The difficulty is
not so 
> 
> True.  It depends on how many inputs and how many outputs and the
sample
> frequency - eg if you are monitoring the temperature continuously,
then
> you would be flooding the network with messages (albiet small ones)
when
of
> your 12 disply devices, only one actually cares about the
temperature
> message.
> Maybe too much traffic would _never_ be an issue in this system, is
just
> a thought......

I can't see the traffic being a problem. Just slap a network analyser on
an
existing Windows network and see how much traffic is already there,
even
when you're not using the network (and no sneers from the *nix people
please). It takes a lot of traffic to flood a network, and even
continuous
messages wouldn't kill it. Unless you're streaming video and music over
the
same network of course.



> > much maintaining the subscription lists at each device - as 
> > _snip_
> I wouldn't say that was a very big issue at all - how do machines
talk
> to each other now?
> _snip_

Despite my view that the broadcast model wouldn't be a huge hit on the
network, personally I prefer the subscription model. It leads to a very
flexible, but harder to implement architecture. Broadcast is easy. If
this
is a PC/server based architecture, then subscription isn't really that
difficult, since it's just a push to designated addresses.

my 2p

d

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