I am currently developing a C# socket server that needs to send and receive commands to a real-time process. The client is an android device. Currently the real-time requirements are “soft”, however in the future more strict timing requirements might arise. Lets say in the future it might be to send commands to a crane that could be potentially dangerous.
The server is working, and seemingly very well with my current synchronous socket server design. I have separate threads for receiving and sending data. I am wondering if there would be any reason to attempt an asynchronous server socket approach? Could it provide more stability and/or faster performance?
I’ll gloss over the definition of real time and say that asynchronous sockets won’t make the body of the request process any faster, but will increase concurrency (the number of requests you can take at any one time). If all processors are busy processing something, you won’t get any gain. This only gives you gain in the situation where a processor would have sat waiting for a socket to receive something.
Just a note on real time, if your real time requirements are anything like the need to guarantee a response in x-time, then C# and .NET will not give you such guarantees. This, however, depends on your current and future definitions of “soft”. It may be the case that you happen to be getting good response times, but don’t confuse that with true real time systems.