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Async await TCP Server for concurrent connection with database calls

I have to write asynchronous TCP Server on to which multiple GPS Devices will be connecting simultaneously (Count :- 1000 Approx) and will push some data of size less than 1 Kb on server, In the response server will send them simple message containing byte received count, The same procedure will happen every 5 Min.
The data received at server is in CSV Format and contains many decimal values, server suppose to process this data and insert the same into database table
After doing lots of Google I decided to go with C#4.5 async and await methods,
This is the first time I am implementing the TCP Server, I believe this is not really the efficient and professional code so any small of small inputs for the same are greatly appreciated. My sample code is as below
// Server starts from Here
public async void Start()
{
IPAddress ipAddre = IPAddress.Parse("192.168.2.5");
TcpListener listener = new TcpListener(ipAddre, _listeningPort);
listener.Start();
while (true)
{
try
{
var tcpClient = await listener.AcceptTcpClientAsync();
HandleConnectionAsync(tcpClient);
}
catch (Exception exp)
{
}
}
}
// Handle the incoming connection and call process data
private async void HandleConnectionAsync(TcpClient tcpClient)
{
try
{
using (var networkStream = tcpClient.GetStream())
using (var reader = new StreamReader(networkStream, Encoding.Default))
using (var writer = new StreamWriter(networkStream))
{
networkStream.ReadTimeout = 5000;
networkStream.WriteTimeout = 5000;
char[] resp = new char[1024];
while (true)
{
var dataFromServer = await reader.ReadAsync(resp, 0, resp.Length);
string dataFromServer1 = new string(resp);
string status = await ProcessDataReceived(dataFromServer1);
if (status.Length != 0)
await writer.WriteAsync(status);
}
}
}
catch (Exception exp){}
}
//Process Data Function
private async Task<string> ProcessDataReceived(string dataFromServer)
{
List<string> values = dataFromServer.Split(',').ToList();
// Do some calculation and rearrange the data
// Create the datatable and insert the data into datatable
using (SqlBulkCopy bulkcopy = new SqlBulkCopy(_dbConn))
{
bulkcopy.WriteToServer(table);
}
return “status”;
}
At present, I have tested it with single GPS Devices and its working for some 10-15 min. than simply crashed and I am very much doubt full about its in the way it will work when there are multiple concurrent connection.
I just want to Make sure whether my basic approach as show in code is in right direction? Am I processing data in correct way or should I suppose to make the use of queue or some other data structure for processing?
Any inputs are greatly appreciable.

The lack of information means that I'm unable to tell whether this is your actual problem, but as far as problems go, this one's a biggy.
So you're not checking if the other end finished. This is indicated by a return value of 0 when calling ReadAsync.
The result value can be less than the number of bytes requested if the number of bytes currently available is less than the requested number, or it can be 0 (zero) if the end of the stream has been reached.
When this condition is detected, you need to get out of the loop, otherwise bad stuff will happen...
while(true)
{
//....
var dataFromServer = await reader.ReadAsync(resp, 0, resp.Length); //bad name!
if(dataFromServer == 0)
{
break;
}
//....
}
As a rule, when you're doing network programming, you need to trap every possible exception and understand what that exception means. Looking at failure in terms of "oh... it crashed" won't get you very far at all. Network stuff fails all the time and you have to understand why it's failing by reading all the diagnostic information you have to hand.

NetworkStream Receive, how to processing data without using 100% CPU?

I have a small game server I'm making that will have dozens of connections sending player data constantly. While I've finally accomplished some basics and now have data sending/receiving, I now face a problem of flooding the server and the client with too much data. I've tried to throttle it back but even then I am hitting 90-100% cpu simply because of receiving and processing the data received running up the CPU.
The method below is a bare version of receiving data from the server. The server sends a List of data to be received by the player, then it goes through that list. I've thought perhaps instead just using a dictionary with a key based on type rather than for looping but I don't think that will significantly improve it, the problem is that it is processing data non-stop because player positions are constantly being updated, sent to the server, then send to other players.
The code below shows receive for the client, the server receive looks very similar. How might I begin to overcome this issue? Please be nice, I am still new to network programming.
private void Receive(System.Object client)
{
MemoryStream memStream = null;
TcpClient thisClient = (TcpClient)client;
List<System.Object> objects = new List<System.Object>();
while (thisClient.Connected && playerConnected == true)
{
try
{
do
{
//when receiving data, first comes length then comes the data
byte[] buffer = GetStreamByteBuffer(netStream, 4); //blocks while waiting for data
int msgLenth = BitConverter.ToInt32(buffer, 0);
if (msgLenth <= 0)
{
playerConnected = false;
thisClient.Close();
break;
}
if (msgLenth > 0)
{
buffer = GetStreamByteBuffer(netStream, msgLenth);
memStream = new MemoryStream(buffer);
}
} while (netStream.DataAvailable);
if (memStream != null)
{
BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
memStream.Position = 0;
objects = new List<System.Object>((List<System.Object>)formatter.Deserialize(memStream));
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("Exception: " + ex.ToString());
if (thisClient.Connected == false)
{
playerConnected = false;
netStream.Close();
thisClient.Close();
break;
}
}
try
{
if (objects != null)
{
for (int i = 0; i < objects.Count; i++)
{
if(objects[i] != null)
{
if (objects[i].GetType() == typeof(GameObject))
{
GameObject p = (GameObject)objects[i];
GameObject item;
if (mapGameObjects.TryGetValue(p.objectID, out item))
{
mapGameObjects[p.objectID] = p;;
}
else
{
mapGameObjects.Add(p.objectID, p);
}
}
}
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("Exception " + ex.ToString());
if (thisClient.Connected == false)
{
playerConnected = false;
netStream.Close();
break;
}
}
}
Console.WriteLine("Receive thread closed for client.");
}
public static byte[] GetStreamByteBuffer(NetworkStream stream, int n)
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[n];
int bytesRead = 0;
int chunk = 0;
while (bytesRead < n)
{
chunk = stream.Read(buffer, (int)bytesRead, buffer.Length - (int)bytesRead);
if (chunk == 0)
{
break;
}
bytesRead += chunk;
}
return buffer;
}

Based on the code shown, I can't say why the CPU utilization is high. The loop will wait for data, and the wait should not consume CPU. That said, it still polls the connection in checking the DataAvailable property, which is inefficient and can cause you to ignore received data (in the implementation shown...that's not an inherent problem with DataAvailable).
I'll go one further than the other answer and state that you should simply rewrite the code. Polling the socket is just no way to handle network I/O. This would be true in any scenario, but it is especially problematic if you are trying to write a game server, because you're going to use up a lot of your CPU bandwidth needlessly, taking it away from game logic.
The two biggest changes you should make here are:
Don't use the DataAvailable property. Ever. Instead, use one of the asynchronous APIs for dealing with network I/O. My favorite approach with the latest .NET is to wrap the Socket in a NetworkStream (or get the NetworkStream from a TcpClient as you do in your code) and then use the Stream.ReadAsync() along with async and await. But the older asynchronous APIs for Sockets work well also.
Separate your network I/O code from the game logic code. The Receive() method you show here has both the I/O and the actual processing of the data relative to the game state in the same method. This two pieces of functionality really belong in two separate classes. Keep both classes, and especially the interface between them, very simple and the code will be a lot easier to write and to maintain.
If you decide to ignore all of the above, you should at least be aware that your GetStreamByteBuffer() method has a bug in it: if you reach the end of the stream before reading as many bytes were requested, you still return a buffer as large as was requested, with no way for the caller to know the buffer is incomplete.
And finally, IMHO you should be more careful about how you shutdown and close the connection. Read about "graceful closure" for the TCP protocol. It's important that each end signal that they are done sending, and that each end receive the other end's signal, before either end actually closes the connection. This will allow the underlying networking protocol to release resources as efficiently and as quickly as possible. Note that TcpClient exposes the socket as the Client property, which you can use to call Shutdown().

Polling is rarely a good approach to communication, unless you're programming 16-bit microcontrollers (and even then, probably not the best solution).
What you need to do is to switch to a producer-consumer pattern, where your input port (a serial port, an input file, or a TCP socket) will act as a producer filling a FIFO buffer (a queue of bytes), and some other part of your program will be able to asynchronously consume the enqueued data.
In C#, there are several ways to do it: you can simply write a couple of methods using a ConcurrentQueue<byte>, or a BlockingCollection, or you can try a library like the TPL Dataflow Library which IMO doesn't add too much value over existing structures in .NET 4. Prior to .NET 4, you would simply use a Queue<byte>, a lock, and a AutoResetEvent to do the same job.
So the general idea is:
When your input port fires a "data received" event, enqueue all received data into the FIFO buffer and set a synchronization event to notify the consumer,
In your consumer thread, wait for the synchonization event. When the signal is received, check if there is enough data in the queue. If yes, process it, if not, continue waiting for the next signal.
For robustness, use an additional watchdog timer (or simply "time since last received data") to be able to fail on timeout.

You want to use the Task-based Asynchronous Pattern. Probably making liberal use of the async function modifier and the await keyword.
You'd be best replacing GetStreamByteBuffer with a direct call to ReadAsync.
For instance you could asynchronously read from a stream like this.
private static async Task<T> ReadAsync<T>(
Stream source,
CancellationToken token)
{
int requestLength;
{
var initialBuffer = new byte[sizeof(int)];
var readCount = await source.ReadAsync(
initialBuffer,
0,
sizeof(int),
token);
if (readCount != sizeof(int))
{
throw new InvalidOperationException(
"Not enough bytes in stream to read request length.");
}
requestLength = BitConvertor.ToInt32(initialBuffer, 0);
}
var requestBuffer = new byte[requestLength];
var bytesRead = await source.ReadAsync(
requestBuffer,
0,
requestLength,
token);
if (bytesRead != requestLength)
{
throw new InvalidDataException(
string.Format(
"Not enough bytes in stream to match request length." +
" Expected:{0}, Actual:{1}",
requestLength,
bytesRead));
}
var serializer = new BinaryFormatter();
using (var requestData = new MemoryStream(requestBuffer))
{
return (T)serializer.Deserialize(requestData);
}
}
Like your code this reads an int from the stream to get the length, then reads that number of bytes and uses the BinaryFormatter to deserialize the data to the specified generic type.
Using this generic function you can simplify your logic,
private Task Receive(
TcpClient thisClient,
CancellationToken token)
{
IList<object> objects;
while (thisClient.Connected && playerConnected == true)
{
try
{
objects = ReadAsync<List<object>>(netStream, token);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("Exception: " + ex.ToString());
if (thisClient.Connected == false)
{
playerConnected = false;
netStream.Close();
thisClient.Close();
break;
}
}
try
{
foreach (var p in objects.OfType<GameObject>())
{
if (p != null)
{
mapGameObjects[p.objectID] = p;
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("Exception " + ex.ToString());
if (thisClient.Connected == false)
{
playerConnected = false;
netStream.Close();
break;
}
}
}
Console.WriteLine("Receive thread closed for client.");
}

You need to put a Thread.Sleep(10) in your while loop. This is also a very fragile way to receive tcp data because it assumes the other side has sent all data before you call this receive. If the other side has only sent half of the data this method fails. This can be countered by either sending fixed sized packages or sending the length of a package first.

Your player position update is similar to the framebuffer update in the VNC protocol where the client request a screen frame & server responds to it with the updated screen data. But there is one exception, VNC server doesn't blindly send the new screen it only sends the changes if there is one. So you need to change the logic from sending all the requested list of objects to only to the objects which are changed after the last sent. Also in addition to it, you should send entire object only once after that send only the changed properties, this will greatly reduce the size of data sent & processed both at clients & server.

WebException (timeout) When Reading Files From Multiple Threads After Setting ThreadPool.MaxThreads

So, I tracked down the issue, but I don't understand the root cause and I'm curious.
I have multiple threads reading files (sometimes the same file, but usually different files. This doesn't seem to matter) from a local drive. This is the test setup, but in production these files are retrieved from a web server.
Anyway, I noticed that, after calling ThreadPool.SetMaxThreads(), I was receiving timeouts reading these files. Removing that line makes the problem go away. My hunch is that it has to do with setting the number of asynchronous IO threads (completionPortThreads, the second argument), but even when I set that value to a large number (50, 100, ...), the issue remains.
Removing the call to SetMaxThreads "fixes" the issue, though it means I can't increase or decrease the number of threads for testing purposes.
Here is a block of code which reproduces the issue. The file size doesn't matter as my test files range anywhere from 2KB to 3MB.
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
_count = 15;
// Comment this line out and everything works
ThreadPool.SetMaxThreads(13, 50);
using (var mre = new ManualResetEvent(false))
{
for (int i = 0; i < _count; ++i)
{
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(ThreadFunc, mre);
}
mre.WaitOne();
}
}
private static readonly ConcurrentStack<byte[]> _files = new ConcurrentStack<byte[]>();
private static int _count;
private static void ThreadFunc(object o)
{
const string path = #"SomeLocalFile";
var file = ReadFile(path);
_files.Push(file);
if (Interlocked.Decrement(ref _count) == 0)
{
((ManualResetEvent)o).Set();
}
}
private static byte[] ReadFile(string uri)
{
var request = WebRequest.Create(uri);
using (var response = request.GetResponse())
using (var stream = response.GetResponseStream())
{
var ret = new byte[stream.Length];
stream.Read(ret, 0, ret.Length);
return ret;
}
}
}
So, yeah, not sure what's going on here. Even with a large value for IO threads I timeout on each test. I'm certainly missing something.

FileWebRequest which is the type returned by WebRequest.Create() also uses ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem. Since you limit the worker threads, the queued work of FileWebRequest never gets executed. You need to set max worker threads to at least _count + 1 (plus 1 so that there is at least one thread the can process the queued work by FileWebRequest).
FileWebRequest.GetRequestStream does the following:
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(read file)
Wait until the file is read or timeout is reached
Better Solution:
Do not enqueue items to the ThreadPool. Use WebRequest.GetResponseAsync instead.

C# server - is this good way for timeouting and disconnecting?

On my multithreaded server I am experiencincg troubles with connections that are not coming from the proper Client and so hang unathorized. I did not want to create new thread only for checking if clients are connected for some time without authorization. Instead of this, I have add this checking to RecieveData thread, shown on the code below. Do you see some performance issue or this is acceptable? The main point is that everytime client is connected (and Class client is instantionized) it starts stopwatch. And so I add to this thread condition - if the time is greater than 1 and the client is still not authorized, its added on the list of clients determinated for disconnection. Thanks
EDIT: This While(true) is RecieveData thread. I am using async. operations - from tcplistener.BeginAccept to threadpooling. I have updated the code to let you see more.
protected void ReceiveData()
{
List<Client> ClientsToDisconnect = new List<Client>();
List<System.Net.Sockets.Socket> sockets = new List<System.Net.Sockets.Socket>();
bool noClients = false;
while (true)
{
sockets.Clear();
this.mClientsSynchronization.TryEnterReadLock(-1);
try
{
for (int i = 0; i < this.mClientsValues.Count; i++)
{
Client c = this.mClientsValues[i];
if (!c.IsDisconnected && !c.ReadingInProgress)
{
sockets.Add(c.Socket);
}
//clients connected more than 1 second without recieved name are suspect and should be disconnected
if (c.State == ClientState.NameNotReceived && c.watch.Elapsed.TotalSeconds > 1)
ClientsToDisconnect.Add(c);
}
if (sockets.Count == 0)
{
continue;
}
}
finally
{
this.mClientsSynchronization.ExitReadLock();
}
try
{
System.Net.Sockets.Socket.Select(sockets, null, null, RECEIVE_DATA_TIMEOUT);
foreach (System.Net.Sockets.Socket s in sockets)
{
Client c = this.mClients[s];
if (!c.SetReadingInProgress())
{
System.Threading.ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(c.ReadData);
}
}
//remove clients in ClientsToDisconnect
foreach (Client c in ClientsToDisconnect)
{
this.RemoveClient(c,true);
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
//this.OnExceptionCaught(this, new ExceptionCaughtEventArgs(e, "Exception when reading data."));
}
}
}

I think I see what you are trying to do and I think a better way would be to store new connections in a holding area until they have properly connected.
I'm not positive but it looks like your code could drop a valid connection. If a new connection is made after the checking section and the second section takes more than a second all the timers would time out before you could verify the connections. This would put the new connections in both the socket pool AND the ClientsToDisconnect pool. Not good. You would drop a currently active connection and chaos would ensue.
To avoid this, I would make the verification of a connection a seperate thread from the using of the connection. That way you won't get bogged down in timing issues (well...you still will but that is what happens when we work with threads and sockets) and you are sure that all the sockets you are using won't get closed by you.

My gut reaction is that while (true) plus if (sockets.Count == 0) continue will lead to heartache for your CPU. Why don't you put this on a Timer or something so that this function is only called every ~.5s? Is the 1s barrier really that important?

"Unable to connect to remote server fail" in HttpWebRequest

I am using VSTS 2008 + C# + .Net 3.5 to develop a console application and I send request to another server (IIS 7.0 on Windows Server 2008). I find when the # of request threads are big (e.g. 2000 threads), the client will receive error "Unable to connect to remote server fail" when invoking response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse().My confusion is -- I have set timeout to be a large value, but I got such fail message within a minute. I think even if the connection are really larger than what IIS could serve, client should not get such fail message so soon, it should get such message after timeout period. Any comments? Any ideas what is wrong? Any ideas to make more number of concurrent connection being served by IIS 7.0?
Here is my code,
class Program
{
private static int ClientCount = 2000;
private static string TargetURL = "http://labtest/abc.wmv";
private static int Timeout = 3600;
static void PerformanceWorker()
{
Stream dataStream = null;
HttpWebRequest request = null;
HttpWebResponse response = null;
StreamReader reader = null;
try
{
request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(TargetURL);
request.Timeout = Timeout * 1000;
request.Proxy = null;
response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
dataStream = response.GetResponseStream();
reader = new StreamReader(dataStream);
// 1 M at one time
char[] c = new char[1000 * 10];
while (reader.Read(c, 0, c.Length) > 0)
{
Console.WriteLine(Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message + "\n" + ex.StackTrace);
}
finally
{
if (null != reader)
{
reader.Close();
}
if (null != dataStream)
{
dataStream.Close();
}
if (null != response)
{
response.Close();
}
}
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Thread[] workers = new Thread[ClientCount];
for (int i = 0; i < ClientCount; i++)
{
workers[i] = new Thread((new ThreadStart(PerformanceWorker)));
}
for (int i = 0; i < ClientCount; i++)
{
workers[i].Start();
}
for (int i = 0; i < ClientCount; i++)
{
workers[i].Join();
}
return;
}
}

Kev answered you question already, I just want to add that creating so many threads is not really good design solution (just context switching overhead is a big minus) plus it won't scale good.
The quick answer would be: use asynchronous operations to read data instead of creating a bunch of threads. Or at least use thread pool (and lower worker thread count). Remember that more connections to one source will only speed things up till some degree. Try benchmarking it and you will see that probably 3-5 connections will work faster that 2000 you are using now.
You can read more about asynchronous client/server architecture (IOCP - input/output completion ports) and its advantages here. You can start from here:
MSDN - Using an Asynchronous Server Socket
MSDN - Asynchronous Server Socket Example
CodeProject - Multi-threaded .NET TCP Server Examples
All of these examples uses lower level TCP object, but it can be applied to WebRequest/WebResponse as well.
UPDATE
To try thread pool version, you can do something like this:
ManualResetEvent[] events = new ManualResetEvent[ClientCount];
for (uint cnt = 0; cnt < events.Length; cnt++)
{
events[cnt] = new ManualResetEvent(false);
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(obj => PerformanceWorker());
}
WaitHandle.WaitAll(events);
Not tested, may need some adjustment.

I reckon you've maxed out the web site's application pool queue. The default is 1000 requests, you're flooding the server with 2000 requests more or less all at once. Increasing the timeout isn't going to solve this.
Try increasing the Queue Length for the application pool the site resides in.
You should try and capture the underlying HTTP status, that'll give you a clue as to what is really going on.
Update:
When I run your code and try and download a sizeable file (200MB) I get (503) Server Unavailable.. Increasing the size of the Application Pool's request queue solves this (I set mine to 10000).
Only once did I see Unable to connect to remote server and sadly have been unable to replicate. This error sounds like there's something broken at the TCP/IP layer. Can you post the full exception?

Go to Smart Thread Pool and downlod the code. It is an instance thread pool that constrains the number of threads. The .Net Thread pool can be problematic in applications that connect to web servers and SQL servers.
Change the loop to this
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var stp = new SmartThreadPool((int) TimeSpan.FromMinutes(5).TotalMilliseconds,
Environment.ProcessorCount - 1, Environment.ProcessorCount - 1);
stp.Start();
for (var i = 0; i < ClientCount; i++)
{
stp.QueueWorkItem(PerformanceWorker);
}
stp.WaitForIdle();
stp.Shutdown();
return;
}
This constrains the thread pool to use 1 thread per proc. Adjust this up until performance starts to degrade. Too many threads are worse than too few. you many find that this is optimal.
Also add this to you config. The value of 100 is a default I use. There is a way to do this in code but the syntax escapes me now.
<system.net>
<connectionManagement>
<add address=“*“ maxconnection=“100“ />
</connectionManagement>
</system.net>

I am using Visual Studio 2005. How to send an SMS, here is my code:
IPHostEntry host;
host = Dns.GetHostEntry(Dns.GetHostName());
UriBuilder urlbuilder = new UriBuilder();
urlbuilder.Host = host.HostName;
urlbuilder.Port = 4719;
string PhoneNumber = "9655336272";
string message = "Just a simple text";
string subject = "MMS subject";
string YourChoiceofName = "victoria";
urlbuilder.Query = string.Format("PhoneNumber=%2B" + PhoneNumber + "&MMSFrom=" + YourChoiceofName + "&MMSSubject=" + subject + "&MMSText=" + message);//+ "&MMSFile=http://127.0.0.1/" + fileName
HttpWebRequest httpReq = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(new Uri(urlbuilder.ToString(), false));
HttpWebResponse httpResponse = (HttpWebResponse)(httpReq.GetResponse());