CORBA SSL Performance Study Comparing C++ and Java

Tammy M. Blaser
NASA Glenn Research Center

I have implemented a CORBA SSL V3 protocol performance prototype
that tests the performance of numerous user settings using the
RSA cipher suite. The prototype, named the Information Encryption
Prototype (IEP), was originally written in Java and then ported
to C++. The IEP calculates various statistics, including the
average Server to Client transfer time in milliseconds and
displays and permanently records test setup and test results. The
IEP GUI allows the user to test various CORBA IDL data types (short,
long, float, double, char, octet, and strings), data structures
(individually passed, array (unbounded sequences), Java vectors
and anys), data sizes ranging from 1KB, 10KB, 100KB, 500KB,
1MB, and local and network configurations. All eight RSA encryption
methods were available for performance tests in the various data
type/structure/size performance settings.  The IEP Java version was
developed with the VisiBroker version 3.3 ORB and associated SSL pack.
The Java port was developed with JDK version 1.1.7B and was developed
on Windows NT and no native or Hot Spot JVM was used. The C++
development environment consisted of MS Visual C++ 5.0 compiler
running on Windows NT with SP5, and was supplemented with the
RogueWave tools.h++ library.  I will describe the performance findings,
as well as, some lessons learned.  I will address the importance
CORBA IDL design has on the securing distributed objects with SSL.
I will clarify that the IEP Java version is just one port of a Java SSL
performance implementation.  Other JVMs most likely execute closer
to C++ speeds.  I will point out that SSL performance is very important
as it is the core capability of many CORBAsec L2 products the are
currently emerging into the market place