CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netwcfdebuggingsoapwshttpbinding
Louis Rhys
Louis Rhys

Reputation: 35637

Simple WCF calls take a lot of time

I am creating a WCF server-client application. However, in my first test, a simple call (the method basically just return true;) takes a lot of time (~5 seconds)

I tried to trace it, and here's a screenshot of the call trace enter image description here

As you can see between line 2 and 3 ther's a lapse of 5 seconds (although to be honest I don't know what line 2 and 3 means)

At the client's (caller's) configuration, the binding is like this (mostly generated by Visual Studio

    <wsHttpBinding>
        <binding name="WSHttpBinding_IAgent" closeTimeout="00:01:00"
          openTimeout="00:01:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:01:00"
          bypassProxyOnLocal="false" transactionFlow="false" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard"
          maxBufferPoolSize="524288" maxReceivedMessageSize="65536" messageEncoding="Text"
          textEncoding="utf-8" useDefaultWebProxy="true" allowCookies="false">
          <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="8192" maxArrayLength="16384"
            maxBytesPerRead="4096" maxNameTableCharCount="16384" />
          <reliableSession ordered="true" inactivityTimeout="00:10:00"
            enabled="false" />
          <security mode="None">
          </security>
        </binding>
      </wsHttpBinding>

and at the server

<wsHttpBinding>
    <binding name="WSHttpBinding_IAgent" closeTimeout="00:01:00"
      openTimeout="00:01:00" receiveTimeout="00:05:00" sendTimeout="00:05:00"
      bypassProxyOnLocal="false" transactionFlow="false" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard"
      maxBufferPoolSize="16777216" maxReceivedMessageSize="16777216"
      messageEncoding="Text" textEncoding="utf-8" useDefaultWebProxy="true"
      allowCookies="false">
      <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="16777216"
        maxArrayLength="16384" maxBytesPerRead="16384" maxNameTableCharCount="16384" />
      <reliableSession ordered="true" inactivityTimeout="00:10:00"
        enabled="false" />
      <security mode="None"/>
    </binding>

And the way I call it something like this

var client = new AgentClient(binding, BuildEndpointAddress(hostName, port));
for(int i =0; i<10; i++)
    client.IsAlive(); //this call is very slow despite just returning true;
    // subsequent calls are also slow so probably not because of wake-up time

Note for this test, both server and client are in the same computer so it couldn't be a network issue. Any idea what's causing the slowness or how I can find more information to troubleshoot this?

Upvotes: 8

Views: 1844

Answers (3)

Matt Roberts
Matt Roberts

Reputation: 26907

Try configuring WCF trace logging - details here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733025.aspx

I've had all sorts of hair-pulling-out issues with WCF, but that kind of performance issue on the same box is not something I've ever seen before. As others have said, the most likely cause would be the "warming up" of the server, but if you are calling it several times then this should not be an issue. Have you tried calling the code multiple times from within your client app?

Upvotes: 0

Dmitry Harnitski
Dmitry Harnitski

Reputation: 6018

Application lifetime is not specified in your post and I will assume that you start the client app and call WCF service at first time without warming it up.

Timing will make sense in that case.

.NET does lots of hidden work to initialize ChannelFactory and Server if it was not warmed up despite using of lightweight binding and message.

That is nature of WCF and should not cause much issues because after warming up communications are really fast.

Try to call your service two times in a row in one app session measuring time for both calls. If both calls take comparable time my assumption is wrong.

In case you would like to see my question and compare environment -

Why is the first WCF client call slow?

Upvotes: 1

Marc Sherman
Marc Sherman

Reputation: 2373

To find more information you may want to leverage Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) with the Perfmonitor tool from the BCL team's codeplex site. One of the many features of this tool is that it can sample the instruction pointer every millisecond and give you the managed call stack for each sample. This may give you an indication of what the code is doing during those lapses of time.

ps. Here's another link to articles that use this tool: http://naveensrinivasan.com/category/net/etw-net/

Upvotes: 0

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