Communications Configuration

1

TCP Stateless. The client applications connect to the server using TCP/IP. The connection is not kept open. The client will open the connection, call the server and then close the connection. Performance can be impacted because the connection needs to be opened each time the client wants to talk to the server. However, this option can scale better because the same connections can be shared by more than one client. In reality though, the server is most likely to run out of processing power before it runs out of network connections.

TCP Stateless is the default connection method.

2

HTTP Stateless. The client applications connect to the server using HTTP. Similar to the TCP Stateless method with the exception that the system will use the HTTP protocol instead of TCP.

It is not recommended that you use this connection method.

3

TCP Stateful. The client applications connect to the server using TCP/IP protocol. The connection will be created once and kept open. This option provides the best performance because the client does not have to get a new connection each time it needs to do something. The weakness with stateful connections is that if the network connection breaks, it can create network errors. POS BE is able to silently recover from these errors by reconnecting. If the reconnection can't be made (because the network is really down), an error will be passed back to the client. Otherwise, all the client notices is a momentary delay while the connection is re-established.

If TCP Stateless is resulting in packet loss, it is recommended that you switch to TCP Stateful.

4

TCP Mixed. The client connects to the server using TCP/IP protocol. The connection will be created and kept open for a maximum of one minute. During this minute the connection will be used as much as possible. This provides the performance benefit of TCP Stateful with the scalability of TCP Stateless.