Is IOCP really scalable for a chat?

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

Supose i have a network server and some clients writes data to other clients, just like a chat. If i use and IOCP (IO Completion Port) design and i have 4 threads waiting for messages. When those threads received data i need to serialize the access to the client list to get the socket descriptor of the client/s i need to resend the received data.

By doing this i think i am loosing all the scalability that IOCP offers. Becase my 4 threads now use Mutexes or Critical Sections around the client list.

To be more especific: clients has names, so one client writes to one or more clients by name. Then i have to find the socket descriptors related to those names when each message arrive to the server.

So my questions are:
1- Is IOCP still superior/scalable than Asynchronous sockets (WSAAsyncSelect) with one dedicated thread to the window that process the messages (for this case)?
2- There is a better design to avoid the use of Mutexes/CSs?

Posted 30-Sep-11 12:31pm

YandyZM

Add a Solution

2 solutions

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Ray Radin · Answer 1 · 2011-09-30T18:53:00

Solution 1

1. Depends on how you use it. The devil is in the details.

2. Yes. The client list should be accessed by only one thread. This thread can tell the other 4 threads to resend using IOCP or standard windows message.

Posted 30-Sep-11 18:53pm

Ray Radin

Len Holgate · Answer 2 · 2011-10-01T18:28:00

Solution 2

1 - You could use a single writer multiple reader lock around your client list.

2 - You could reference count the client objects, you then only need to hold the lock on the client list for long enough to obtain the client object rather than for the whole send operation.

Posted 1-Oct-11 18:28pm

Len Holgate