[Beowulf] MPICH "remote access" speed

[steve_heaton at ozemail.com.au]

G'day all

Another newbie question for which I beg your tolerence.

I'm money poor but time rich. Given the limitations of my hardware (4x dual P3 nodes, GigaEther switched interconnect) I'd like to tweak the cluster's performance as much as possible :)

I was wondering if anyone has put RSH v's SSH head-to-head under MPICH in terms of performance?

I've read in a few places that SSH is a bit slower due to the need to exchange keys etc. On the other hand I hear that some applications can leave the connection open under SSH and that can make them faster than having to RSH for every exchange.

As always, thoughts, comments etc greatly appreciated :)

Cheers
Steve

This message was sent through MyMail http://www.mymail.com.au