WCF vs. .Net Remoting

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?

Solution

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 enter image description here