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Question about server socket programming model

Asked 2009-05-19T01:20:41.440
11

Over the last couple of months I've been working on some implementations of sockets servers in C++ and Java. I wrote a small server in Java that would handle & process input from a flash application hosted on a website and I managed to successfully write a server that handles input from a 2D game client with multiple players in C++. I used TCP in one project & UDP in the other one. Now, I do have some questions that I couldn't really find on the net and I hope that some of the experts could help me. :)

Let's say I would like to build a server in C++ that would handle the input from thousands of standalone and/or web applications, how should I design my server then? So far, I usually create a new & unique thread for each user that connects, but I doubt this is the way to go.

Also, How does one determine the layout of packets sent over the network; is data usually sent over the network in a binary or text state? How do you handle serializated objects when you send data to different media (eg C++ server to flash application)?

And last, is there any easy to use library which is commonly used that supports portability (eg development on a windows machine & deployment on a linux box) other than boost asio.

Thank you.

c++ sockets
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2 Answers

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Though previous answers provide good direction, just for completeness, I'd like to point out that threads are not an absolute requirement for great socket server performance. Some examples are here. There are many approaches to scalability too - thread pools, pre-forked processes, server pools, etc.

answered 2009-05-19T02:26:44.723
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you're still going to need a socket to handle every client, but the idea would be to create a pool of X sockets (say 50) and then, when you get close (say 90%) to consuming all those sockets, create another pool of X sockets. At some point, after clients have connected, sent data and disconnected, some of your sockets will be available for use and you can use them (google socket pools for this info)

The layout of data is always difficult. If all your clients and servers will be using the same hardware and operating system, you can send data in binary format, but there are many trips and traps there (byte alignment is at the top of the list). sending formatted text is always easier, but certainly more expensive in terms of bandwidth and processing power because you have to change format from machine to text before sending and, of course, back again at the receiver.

re: serialized, I'm sorry, I can't help you, nor with libraries (I'm too embedded to have used much of these)

answered 2009-05-19T01:55:05.910

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