Measuring the performance of OrbixTalk: A reliable multicast messaging system

Abstract

This paper presents a performance study on IONA's OrbixTalk, a software system that provides a decoupled, asynchronous and reliable multicast messaging using UDP-based IP multicast. Two programming interfaces are examined: one for Orbix (C++) applications and another for OrbixWeb (Java) applications. Performance measurements were conducted using various message sizes and varying number of receivers. The software system works fine for both types of applications. Nonetheless, the performance characteristics of the two are different. The Java applications require longer set-up time, more than two times that of C++ applications. However, for the actual multicasting of messages, the Java approach yields lower delay and higher throughput, much better than the C++ approach, particularly for large number of receivers. Consequently, the OrbixWeb design of OrbixTalk turns out to be more suitable for large group multicast.