[Spread-users] Spread Performance

[William Isley]

Hi Spread Group,

I plan to use spread to reliably multicast Gigabytes of files to 40+ 
machines. I have tried several configurations, and with only 5 clients 
receiving files (rebuilt from messages sent over Spread), the best data 
throughput I can achieve is 3 MB/sec. I am required to achieve at least 6 
MB/sec.

I have tried running the Spread Daemon on a separate server, on the message 
sender, and a message receiver. I get the best performance with the Spread 
Daemon running on the message receiver. I am using the SAFE message 
transport type, but have tried the UNRELIABLE message transport type with 
negligable performance gain.

I have tried scheduling Spread to run with Realtime scheduling. The 
performance gain was negligable. I am running all of this software on 
Windows.

I tried running the Spread Daemon on a dual Xeon processor machine. The 
result is that the Spread clients loose there connection under heavy load. 
The other machines in the configuration single 1GHz processor machines.

I need to squeeze more out of Spread than 3 MB/sec. The website advertises 8 
MB/sec. What can I do to better this performance? Are there any changes I 
can make to the Spread.conf file that will increase the performance? Is it 
possible to run multiple Spread Daemons? How to I configure this system if 
this is an option and what is the benefit?

I have looked at TIBCO's SmartPGM, which is not viable due to cost. JGroups 
advertises performance below that of Spread.

Any help from anyone would be apprecieate,

William Isley
IMS Consultants
1250 N. Lakeview Ave, Suite A
Anaheim, CA  92807
Phone:  (714) 693-3505, x21
E-mail: wmisley at imsconsultants.com

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