[boost] Re: [network] An RFC posted to the sandbox

From: Maxim Yegorushkin (e-maxim_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-04-13 03:27:09

On Tue, 12 Apr 2005 07:41:34 -0700 (PDT), Don G <dongryphon_at_[hidden]>  
wrote:

[]

> I am curious to know what folks think about this approach.

Hi Don,

I skimmed through you stuff. It confused me a lot.

What kind of applications is that targeted for?

For a heavy duty high performance server you don't want to use it, because  
the abstractions you provide do have a price, and I'm not sure about the  
quality of implementation. What you need when doing such a server is to  
stick close to the metal, not paying for (I'm pretty sure you know that)  
useless context switches, lock contention, memory allocations and data  
copies. One really don't care about Linux/Windoze portability for this  
kind of servers just because Windoze is not an option for it's poor  
network performance and inherent security breaches.

For a simple portable application one would probably stick to BSD  
nonblocking sockets + select() or blocking sockets + threads. The  
resulting code size will probably close to that of the code using your  
stuff, but code transparency and complexity will be in favor of the former  
for sure.

Aside from this, I'm rather skeptical about the library you are working on  
guys. IMO, the root of all problems and complexity is its intended  
portability. The target platforms' APIs are too different to make  
implementation efficient and usable for any kind serious network  
application. If M$ does not care about its network APIs portability, why  
would anyone else care about it?

-- 
Maxim Yegorushkin