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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.lava.net!nntp.reed.edu!usenet.cat.pdx.edu!newsrelay.netins.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.dti.ad.jp!news-jp-0.abone.net!np1.iij.ad.jp!nf0.iij.ad.jp!nr0.iij.ad.jp!news.iij.ad.jp!news.CET.CO.JP!usenet From: Michael Hancock <michaelh@cet.co.jp> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Sys V Streams Vs. BSD Sockets Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 22:45:51 +0900 Organization: CET Lines: 29 Message-ID: <3339288F.2093@cet.co.jp> References: <5h4rte$92a@news.interlog.com> <5h75v9$ta@uriah.heep.sax.de> <5h9v8n$s9t@delphi.cs.ucla.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: a09m.cet.co.jp Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (Win95; I) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:37841 Scott Michel wrote: > > J Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de> wrote: > : paulg@gold.interlog.com (Paul Griffith) wrote: > > : > I know this is a generic Unix question (if there is such a thing), but > : > where can I find a FAQ on the major differences in streams and sockets > : > ? Is one better for some tasks ?? > > : I don't know where you can find a good overview. Anyway, one of the > : worst mistakes of SysV has it been to implement the IP layers on top > : of STREAMS. It's nothing but slow. > > : STREAMS are good for implementing things like terminal line > : disciplines, maybe even for slow networking services (like ISDN). > > I was hoping you'd mention that STREAMS is based on generic message > passing, which is (inherently) slower than the function pointer based > message passing in BSD. At each STREAMS layer, the module has to > interpret the contents of the message. Contrast this with BSD, in > which each function has a priori knowledge of the message contents and > doesn't have to consume cycles figuring out what to do; it just does it. The STREAMS layers can be pipelined on large scale SMP machines like the high end UltraSparcs and really perform well, on the otherhand single CPU PCs running FreeBSD can really kick and outperform some single CPU or even some of the multi CPU Sparcs. Mike Hancock