[erlang-questions] { ProcessName, NodeName } ! Message VS rpc:call/4 VS HTTP/1.1 across Erlang Nodes

[Loïc Hoguin]

Not HTTP, you don't want to have the overhead of the request and headers 
etc. if you are going to need them to communicate a lot. Plus your 
setting makes a lot of sense for distribution.

Apart from that, benchmark! :)

On 11/09/2012 06:20 AM, Joshua Muzaaya wrote:
>
> I have a setup in which two nodes are going to be communicating a lot.
> On Node A, there are going to be thousands of processes, which are meant
> to access services on Node B. There is going to be a massive load of
> requests and responses across the two nodes. The two Nodes, will be
> running on two different servers, each on its own hardware server.
>
> I have 3 Options: HTTP/1.1 , rpc:call/4 and Directly sending a message
> to a registered gen_server on Node B. Let me explain each option.
>
> *HTTP/1.1*
>
> Suppose that on Node A, i have an HTTP Client like |Ibrowse|, and on
> Node B, i have a web server like |Yaws-1.95|, the web server being able
> to handle unlimited connections, the operating system settings tweaked
> to allow yaws to handle all connections. And then make my processes on
> Node A to communicate using HTTP. In this case each method call, would
> mean a single HTTP request and a reply. I believe there is an overhead
> here, but we are evaluating options here. The erlang Built in mechanism
> called |webtool|, may be built for this kind of purpose.
>
> *rpc:call/4*
>
> I could simply make direct rpc calls from Node A to Node B. I am not
> very sure how the underlying rpc mechanism works , but i think that when
> two erlang nodes connect via |net_adm:ping/1|, the created connection is
> not closed but all rpc calls use this pipe to transmit requests and pass
> responses. Please correct me on this one.
>
> *Sending a Message from Node A to Node B *
>
> I could make my processes on Node A to just send message to a registered
> process, or a group of processes on Node B. This too seems a clean option.
>
> *Q1.* Which of the above options would you recommend and why, for an
> application in which two erlang nodes are going to have enormous
> communications between them all the time. Imagine a messaging system, in
> which two erlang nodes are the routers :) ?
>
> *Q2.* Which of the above methods is cleaner, less problematic and is
> more fault tolerant (i mean here that, the method should NOT have single
> point of failure, that could lead to all processes on Node A blind) ?
>
> *Q3.* The mechanism of your choice: how would you make it even more
> fault tolerant, or redundant?
>
> *Assumptions: * The Nodes are always alive and will never go down, the
> network connection between the nodes will always be available and
> non-congested (dedicated to the two nodes only) , the operating system
> have allocated maximum resources to these two nodes.
>
> Thank you for your evaluations
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> erlang-questions mailing list
> erlang-questions@REDACTED
> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>


-- 
Loïc Hoguin
Erlang Cowboy
Nine Nines
http://ninenines.eu