Bytes read from Socket buffer

Question

Hi,
I'm writing a proxy application that relays data from a server to a client that requested the data. One thing I have observed is that when I have read about 32136 bytes of data, my reads from my buffered input stream fetch only one byte at a time. Not only is my read function now reading only one byte at a time, but it takes over a minute to fetch 83 bytes of data. And the delay gets worse the longer I run.
In an effort to stress test my app, I deliberately set the send and receive buffers of the client socket to a small value (128 bytes). I can understand that filling up the buffer could slow down the reading, but what is odd is that long after the client has digested all the data, the Input stream reads never seem to go back to their original speed.
Is this an O/s thing? a JVM thing? I'm running JDK 1.3.1 on an intel box with Linux Redhad 6.2. It seems to me that there must be some way of getting the socket buffer clear on the receive side so that I can get something that ressembles a normal dataflow. Oh, and I tried toggling the TCP no delay flag to no avail.
Any suggestions?
-hugh

Answer 1

However, even with a large socket buffer, there is
always the chance that the receiving app will run
slowly due to bad programming, network latency, etc
(we're not the authors of the clients who will
connect), meaning even with the maximum buffer size,
we could fill the socket buffer. I suppose, though,
if it is the sender app that is getting fooled, then
it's a matter for the authors of the sending
application.True but the same thing will happen if the client connects directly to the server without your proxy, so why worry? General tips for writing proxies: use as large a buffer as possible, run separate reading and writing threads in your proxy, and propagate an EOF by doing shutdownOutput in the opposite direction. When you have done this in both directions you can close the socket, not before.