NYCPHP Meetup

[Chris Shiflett]

--- crisscott at netzero.com wrote:
> That is helpful. I obviously wasn't looking at this from the right
> angle. But like David mentioned, I would think that having lots
> users sleeping and polling would cause some strain on the server.

Well, it wouldn't cause much strain at all, since it's only having to send a
little chunk every time someone sends a message.

What it does do is tie up connections. Most people who do this consider the
Web server to be a chat server and dedicate it to that purpose (or, at least
dedicate some Web server to the purpose, perhaps listening on an alternate
port). Because the strain is very little, you can increase your maximum
number of child processes/threads/whatever a ton without increasing your load
too much (this tuning requires a bit of experience with tuning Web servers, but
trial an error is also very educational). You just need to be able to support a
connection for every user in a chat.

Hope that helps.

Chris

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