[Dxspider-support] DXspider and WinSock

[Dirk Koopman]

The "master" branch of DXSpider does not, as such, need any other 
program to run in Windows. It just works (it has to be said: rather to 
my surprise) which is a testament to the "power of perl".

Comments about the maximum number of users on a Windows instance were 
certainly true 10 years ago (or earlier) using ActiveState perl. It 
happened because 64 is the default number of (file, socket?) handles 
that are declared when one includes the appropriate socket / networking 
"header" file in one' s program. It can be simply overridden by 
#defining a larger value for that number before #including that header 
file. I put in a bug report to the Perl maintainers asking them to do 
so. I am unaware of whether they did or not. Strawberry Perl is, 
apparently, more up to date and "modern". Whether this makes any 
difference to the 64 socket limit, someone will have to find out.

In any case, you should be able to run DXSpider on Windows - as is - and 
get up to IIRC 62 users/nodes on there. Once you have hit that limit - 
if it still exists - then we need to regroup and I probably ought to  
poke the Perl maintainers again. A better alternative, which I am glad 
to see more and more people are doing, is to use a cheap (or repurposed 
old) computer and running a form of linux/BSD on it, where these 
problems go away or at least they don't appear until the node approaches 
1024 users.

DXSpider was never "designed" to run on Windows. The fact that it does 
(if it still does) is a happy accident. It is not actively supported - 
but I will happily accept fixes (and have done). The AGW (which will 
talk to a remote, as well a local, Windows PC running AGW) and BPQ 
interfaces are examples of this. I do not run Windows except when I need 
to do something that requires it - and then only in a VM.

73 Dirk G1TLH

PS AFAIK no-one has tried the "mojo" branch on Windows and I have reason 
to suspect it may not work very well or even at all.

On 27/06/2020 00:08, Testing 123 via Dxspider-support wrote:
> I was under the impression there are several versions
> of winsock for various type of clusters, CC, DXS, AR possibly others,
> acting as a proxy between user and the respective type of cluster, with a
> monitoring program on the side. Maybe I am missing something fundamental
> here, but, without trying to get them out of context, I did see sentences
> like :
> “The winsock.exe program prevents lockouts of Dx Spider users (Window's
> version) when too many try to connect to the same cluster.[...]”
> “Download Winsock.exe for AR Cluster or Dx Spider. CC Cluster requires a
> special version linked to from the CC Cluster page. [...]”
> “Winsock Setup for Dx Spider running in Windows. Dx Spider for Windows has
> a limitation of about 60 telnet connections. The solution is to run 2 or
> more copies of Dx Spider in your computer and use this program to look
> after the users. [...]”