Implementation and exploration of two client-server interactions: the Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) and the User Data Protocol (UDP).

Coursework component of Imperial CO527 Computer Networks & Distributed Systems. Co-author: Nathan Amar

This work is essentially a comparison of interaction methods- a first, primitive method (UDP), and a remote procedure call (Java RMI). A bit of background on these two methods, courtesy of the teachings from CO527:

The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is simplest Transport Layer communication protocol available of the TCP/IP protocol suite. It involves minimum amount of communication mechanism. UDP is said to be an unreliable transport protocol but it uses IP services which provides best effort delivery mechanism.

General client-server interaction for UDP communication

However, basic message passing in UDP can leave a lot of work for the programmer e.g. constructing messages, transforming data types.

Remote Procedure Call, enabled by the Java RMI aim to make a call to a remote service look the same as a call to a local procedure. – The parameters to the call are carried in one or several request messages and the results returned reply message(s). – However calls to procedures implemented remotely can fail in different ways to procedures implemented locally, the semantics of an RPC are different from those of a local procedure.

General client-server interaction for RPC communication

From root of repository,

make all

to build both the RMI and UDP component.

To run the RMIServer:

./rmiserver.sh 

To run the RMIClient

./rmiclient.sh [IP ADDRESS / SERVERNAME] [RECEIVING PORT] [NUMBER OF MESSAGES]

where [IP ADDRESS / SERVERNAME] is the server's IP address or the servername, and [NUMBER OF MESSAGES] is the number of messages you would like to transmit to the server. For example:

./rmiclient.sh localhost 100

or

./rmiclient.sh 116.99.232.120 100

To run the UDP Server:

./udpserver.sh [RECEIVING PORT]

where [RECEIVING PORT] is the agreed port you will use for communication with the client. For example:

./udpserver.sh 5000

To run the UDP Client:

./udpclient.sh [IP ADDRESS / SERVERNAME] [RECEIVING PORT] [NUMBER OF MESSAGES]

where [IP ADDRESS / SERVERNAME] is the server's IP address or the servername, [RECEIVING PORT] is the same as that used by the server, and [NUMBER OF MESSAGES] is the number of messages you would like to transmit to the server. For example:

./udpclient.sh 116.99.232.120 5000 1000

or

./udpclient.sh localhost 5000 1000

For a more in-depth analysis of this project, have a look at ProjectReport.pdf

If anything, the door is always open. Contact details in bio!

Enjoy :)