LDAP-UX Client Services B.05.00 Administrator's Guide
5.17.2 ldapclientd persistent connections
Since the HP-UX can generate many requests to an LDAP server, the overhead of establishing a
single connection for every request can create excessive network traffic and slow response time
for name service requests. Depending on network latency, the connection establishment and
tear-down can cause relatively severe delays for client response. However, a persistent connection
to the directory server will eliminate this delay.
In the ldapclientd daemon, a pool of active connections is maintained to serve requests from the
Name Service Subsystem (NSS). If the NSS needs to perform a request to the directory server,
one of the free connections in this pool will be used. If there are no free connections in the pool,
a new connection will be established, and added to the pool. If system activity is low, then
connections that have been idle for a specified period of time (configurable in the ldapclientd.conf
file) then those connections will be dropped, to free up directory server resources. Aside from
ldapclientd connection time-out configuration, it is also possible to define a maximum number
of connections that ldapclientd may establish. Setting a high number of connections means assures
that ldapclientd will not become a bottleneck in performing name service operations to the
directory server. However, a high number of connections from a large number of HP-UX clients
to the same directory server may exhaust all available connection resources on that directory
server. Setting a low number of maximum connections will reduce that resource requirement
on the directory server, but may create a performance bottleneck in the ldapclientd.
188 Administering LDAP-UX Client Services