Nestor Matthews wrote:
chooses content and initiates a transfer. The opposite of "Server Push" is
"Client Pull", where the user selects content and initiates a transfer by
clicking on something in his browser window.
I don't know what "pushing" Matlab through a local network would mean. I
assume what you mean is just that you install one copy of Matlab on a single
computer and when you execute Matlab on other computers you do that by
accessing over the network the copy of Matlab on that one machine where it is
installed.
Reasons why you might want to do that, and comments on each.
1- The person maintaining the computers does not want to do the work of
repeatedly installing Matlab and maintaining multiple installed copies,
especially when the students can modify the installations, requireing a
re-install.
The work of installing is a one-time thing. On windows2000 you can set
permissions to prevent users from dorking with the Matlab installation. I
think maybe there are programs which will automatically replicate directories
across networks for you, which helps to restore settings after the students
"customize" them.
2- To conserve hard drive space.
Drive space is too cheap for this to matter.
3- To save on licensing fees; If not all computers run Matlab at once, then
you can undersubscribe licenses but still have Matlab available on each
computer.
Mathworks sells a "concurrent" license, which I think works that way and use a
central server. (Though I could be confused about that.) Do they really set
this up so that you execute Matlab from a remote server, or is the remote
server just a key sever ? I suggest checking Mathworks info online. If it is
a key server, presumably workstations would check out keys infrequently, maybe
only once when you launch Matlab, and not thereafter.
When running the psychtoolbox, it helps to turn off other process running on
the system. That is becasue other processes take time from Matlab, which slows
down drawing and causes Psychtoolbox scripts to miss important deadlines, for
example blanking intervals.
Some of those processes which you might want to shut down are those which
implement the network stack. But if you did that, key checking would not
work. Whether shutting networking processes down when using the Psychtoolbox
helps much, I don't know. It could be that when idle they use a negligible
amount of CPU time in innocuously-sized slices. Whether there is any practical
benefit to disabling the network on Windows is maybe something that someone
else who reads the psychtoolbox forum has looked at.
So in summary, if you have a key server, and if those keys are tested
infrequently, and if running the pyschoolbox with the network stack enabled
isn't a big problem, then it might work to use the network version of the
license.
Best,
Allen
> Our psychology department is considering 'pushing' the psych toolbox forI am only familiar with web server pushing, which means that the web server
> Windows (Windows 2000) from one computer to another thru a local area
> network.
chooses content and initiates a transfer. The opposite of "Server Push" is
"Client Pull", where the user selects content and initiates a transfer by
clicking on something in his browser window.
I don't know what "pushing" Matlab through a local network would mean. I
assume what you mean is just that you install one copy of Matlab on a single
computer and when you execute Matlab on other computers you do that by
accessing over the network the copy of Matlab on that one machine where it is
installed.
Reasons why you might want to do that, and comments on each.
1- The person maintaining the computers does not want to do the work of
repeatedly installing Matlab and maintaining multiple installed copies,
especially when the students can modify the installations, requireing a
re-install.
The work of installing is a one-time thing. On windows2000 you can set
permissions to prevent users from dorking with the Matlab installation. I
think maybe there are programs which will automatically replicate directories
across networks for you, which helps to restore settings after the students
"customize" them.
2- To conserve hard drive space.
Drive space is too cheap for this to matter.
3- To save on licensing fees; If not all computers run Matlab at once, then
you can undersubscribe licenses but still have Matlab available on each
computer.
Mathworks sells a "concurrent" license, which I think works that way and use a
central server. (Though I could be confused about that.) Do they really set
this up so that you execute Matlab from a remote server, or is the remote
server just a key sever ? I suggest checking Mathworks info online. If it is
a key server, presumably workstations would check out keys infrequently, maybe
only once when you launch Matlab, and not thereafter.
> While I suspect that this may be OK for some classroom demosIf you are dealing with a key server, then it comes down to this:
> that are not time sensitive, I'm concerned that 'push' technology will
> introduce unwanted variability in time-sensitive demos. Can you offer any
> comments, tips, or warnings about 'pushing' the psych toolbox (for windows)
> across a LAN?
When running the psychtoolbox, it helps to turn off other process running on
the system. That is becasue other processes take time from Matlab, which slows
down drawing and causes Psychtoolbox scripts to miss important deadlines, for
example blanking intervals.
Some of those processes which you might want to shut down are those which
implement the network stack. But if you did that, key checking would not
work. Whether shutting networking processes down when using the Psychtoolbox
helps much, I don't know. It could be that when idle they use a negligible
amount of CPU time in innocuously-sized slices. Whether there is any practical
benefit to disabling the network on Windows is maybe something that someone
else who reads the psychtoolbox forum has looked at.
So in summary, if you have a key server, and if those keys are tested
infrequently, and if running the pyschoolbox with the network stack enabled
isn't a big problem, then it might work to use the network version of the
license.
Best,
Allen