We’ve added an option to have the browser communicate back to the Edgynet demo server with far less latency. This should dramatically improve the performance of our application for folks connecting from outside of Europe, as well as those connecting over high latency Internet connections (eg 3G).
It’s easy to configure. On the demo page just click the Preferences button near the top of the page and select the “Java Applet” option. Then just click “OK” when you are prompted to have the page reloaded. Your decision will be stored in a cookie, so you should only have to do this once.
In order to avail of this improvement, you will need to have Java, version 1.6 or above, installed on your machine. We strongly recommend that you use Sun’s Java Plug-in, and ideally that you use version 1.6.10 or above. Also worth noting that the Applet will not work if you are stuck behind a HTTP proxy.
Thanks for all your feedback and suggestions on solving the latency problem with our service. We tried out a number of your suggestions, including line-buffering in Javascript, and offering a direct Telnet interface to the system. We opted to go with a Java Applet because it put the least restrictions on the architecture of our system. Ultimately, we’re hoping that something like Web Sockets gives us a TCP-like connection directly from Javascript back to the server. For the moment, let’s see how we get on with the Applet – the performance is likely to be similar to what we’ll get with Web Sockets anyway. Your feedback is always most welcome!
