WCF vs. .Net Remoting

Question

according to this article, WCF with named pipes is the best choice for IPC, and it is around 25 % faster than .Net Remoting.

I have the following code that compares WCF with named pipes with .Net Remoting:

[ServiceContract]
internal interface IRemote
{
    [OperationContract]
    string Hello(string name);
}

[ServiceBehavior]
internal class Remote : MarshalByRefObject, IRemote
{
    public string Hello(string name)
    {
        return string.Format("Hello, {0}!", name);
    }
}

class Program
{
    private const int Iterations = 5000;

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        TestWcf(Iterations);
        TestRemoting(Iterations);

        TestWcf(Iterations);
        TestRemoting(Iterations);

        TestWcf(Iterations);
        TestRemoting(Iterations);

        Console.ReadKey();
    }

    private static void TestRemoting(int iterations)
    {
        var domain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("TestDomain");

        var proxy =
            (IRemote)
            domain.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location, "ConsoleApplication6.Remote");

        Console.WriteLine("Remoting: {0} ms.", Test(proxy, iterations));
    }

    private static void TestWcf(int iterations)
    {
        var address = "net.pipe://localhost/test";

        var host = new ServiceHost(typeof (Remote));
        host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof (IRemote), new NetNamedPipeBinding(), address);
        host.Open();

        var proxy = ChannelFactory<IRemote>.CreateChannel(new NetNamedPipeBinding(), new EndpointAddress(address));

        Console.WriteLine("Wcf: {0} ms.", Test(proxy, iterations));

        host.Close();
    }

    private static double Test(IRemote proxy, int iterations)
    {
        var start = DateTime.Now;

        for (var i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
        {
            proxy.Hello("Sergey");
        }

        var stop = DateTime.Now;

        return (stop - start).TotalMilliseconds;
    }
}

A got the following results for 5000 iterations:

Wcf: 14143 ms.
Remoting: 2232 ms.
Wcf: 14289 ms.
Remoting: 2130 ms.
Wcf: 14126 ms.
Remoting: 2112 ms.

Wcf is around 7 times slower than .Net Remoting in this test.

I tried to:

• set the security mode to None;
• set the InstanceContextMode to Single/PerCall;
• set the ConcurrencyMode to Single/Multiple;

but the results are the same.

Does anybody know what I do wrong? Why WCF is so slow?

Is there a way to speed up this code?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT:

I have modified the test a little bit. The contract is the same.

The first test looks like this (Wcf test):

class Program
{
    private const int Iterations = 5000;

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var address = "net.pipe://localhost/test";

        var host = new ServiceHost(typeof(Remote));
        host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IRemote), new NetNamedPipeBinding(NetNamedPipeSecurityMode.None), address);
        host.Open();

        var proxy = ChannelFactory<IRemote>.CreateChannel(new NetNamedPipeBinding(NetNamedPipeSecurityMode.None), new EndpointAddress(address));

        TestWcf(proxy, Iterations);
        TestWcf(proxy, Iterations);
        TestWcf(proxy, Iterations);
        TestWcf(proxy, Iterations);
        TestWcf(proxy, Iterations);

        Console.ReadKey();

        host.Close();
    }

    private static void TestWcf(IRemote proxy, int iterations)
    {
        var start = DateTime.Now;

        for (var i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
        {
            proxy.Hello("Sergey");
        }

        var stop = DateTime.Now;

        Console.WriteLine("Wcf: {0} ms.", (stop - start).TotalMilliseconds);
    }
}

Here are the results:

Wcf: 2564 ms.
Wcf: 1026 ms.
Wcf: 986 ms.
Wcf: 990 ms.
Wcf: 992 ms.

The second test looks like this (.Net Remoting test):

class Program
{
    private const int Iterations = 5000;

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var domain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("TestDomain");

        var proxy =
            (IRemote)
            domain.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location, "ConsoleApplication6.Remote");

        TestRemoting(proxy, Iterations);
        TestRemoting(proxy, Iterations);
        TestRemoting(proxy, Iterations);
        TestRemoting(proxy, Iterations);
        TestRemoting(proxy, Iterations);

        Console.ReadKey();
    }

    private static void TestRemoting(IRemote proxy, int iterations)
    {
        var start = DateTime.Now;

        for (var i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
        {
            proxy.Hello("Sergey");
        }

        var stop = DateTime.Now;

        Console.WriteLine("Remoting: {0} ms.", (stop - start).TotalMilliseconds);
    }
}

Here are the results:

Remoting: 261 ms.
Remoting: 224 ms.
Remoting: 252 ms.
Remoting: 243 ms.
Remoting: 234 ms.

As you can see, .Net Remoting is faster again. The tests were ran outside the debugger.

Why is this so?

Answer 1

Debuggers are not real measure when try to compare the performance , here is what I did and got WCF Kicking out Remoting from the ring ;)

1) Also modified your test to run it from same program/exe

  namespace ConsoleApplication6
{
  [ServiceContract]
  internal interface IRemote
  {
    [OperationContract]
    string Hello(string name);
  }

  [ServiceBehavior]
  internal class Remote : MarshalByRefObject, IRemote
  {
    public string Hello(string name)
    {
      return string.Format("Hello, {0}!", name);
    }
  }

  class Program
  {
    private const int Iterations = 5000;

    static void Main(string[] p)
    {
      TestWcf();
      TestRemoting();
    }


    static void TestWcf()
    {
      var address = "net.pipe://localhost/test";

      var host = new ServiceHost(typeof(Remote));
      host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IRemote), new NetNamedPipeBinding(NetNamedPipeSecurityMode.None), address);
      host.Open();

      var proxy = ChannelFactory<IRemote>.CreateChannel(new NetNamedPipeBinding(NetNamedPipeSecurityMode.None), new EndpointAddress(address));

      TestWcf(proxy, Iterations);
      TestWcf(proxy, Iterations);
      TestWcf(proxy, Iterations);
      TestWcf(proxy, Iterations);
      TestWcf(proxy, Iterations);

      Console.WriteLine("WCF done");

      host.Close();
    }

    private static void TestWcf(IRemote proxy, int iterations)
    {
      var start = DateTime.Now;

      for (var i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
      {
        proxy.Hello("Sergey");
      }

      var stop = DateTime.Now;

      Console.WriteLine("Wcf: {0} ms.", (stop - start).TotalMilliseconds);
    }

    static void TestRemoting()
    {
      var domain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("TestDomain");

      var proxy =
          (IRemote)
          domain.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location, "ConsoleApplication6.Remote");

      TestRemoting(proxy, Iterations);
      TestRemoting(proxy, Iterations);
      TestRemoting(proxy, Iterations);
      TestRemoting(proxy, Iterations);
      TestRemoting(proxy, Iterations);
      Console.WriteLine("Remoting done");
      Console.ReadKey();
    }

    private static void TestRemoting(IRemote proxy, int iterations)
    {
      var start = DateTime.Now;

      for (var i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
      {
        proxy.Hello("Sergey");
      }

      var stop = DateTime.Now;

      Console.WriteLine("Remoting: {0} ms.", (stop - start).TotalMilliseconds);
    }
  }

}

2) Compile it in release mode and ran it outside debugger.

here is my output