An interesting application and it sounds like you have a working solution.

I assume that you are connecting a subset of the 500 servers at any given time?

I've generally found it better to have a few long running threads rather than a lots of short running ones.

Basically, each thread is a loop that (in your case) would connect to a server, do what ot need to, disconnect then loop back and connect to the next server. To ensure each thread does as much of the work as it is capable of, you load/feed a shared queue with the server information, and each time around the loop, each thread pick off the next server to be connected. Any results can be fed back to the main thread one or more return queues.

The nice things about this arrangement are:

  • It scales nicely. Once you have it working (slowly) with a single comms thread, you just start as many more identical threads as your system and bandwidth can handle.
  • It minimises any memory leaks that might occur as each thread persists until the work is done. With the start a new thread for each server approach, you multiply any leaks by the number of servers.

    The downside for your application is that any large data tables you need within your comms threads will be replicated per thread, but it would appear you are doing that anyway, and by only replicating for a few, persistant threads instead of every time you start a new one, you will save time.

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    In reply to Re^5: release threads resources? by BrowserUk
    in thread release threads resources? by Elijah

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