Run as service vs application question please.

[rede96]

I am new to .Net and programming and have only really worked with some VBA in the past. I am writing a program that will monitor data sent via TCP/IP over a local network. The data is sent from some data acquisition modules to a server PC. There is an ActiveX control supplied with the modules for communicating with the units.

Each module has its own IP, so I need scan a range of IP's, maybe up to 20 or so, every 250 ms. (Or just scan continuously would be better.) I then need to do some code and write the results to a database. The Server PC is just using Windows XP pro.

I have read somewhere about problems with maximum number of simultaneous connections allowed by some NT licenses. Although I am still a newbie and not quite got my head around all this yet!

Are there any resource/other benefits by running this as a service or should I just write it as a windows application?

 

[cjard]

I wouldnt write anything that carries out a denial of service attack on a network service like that..

 

[rede96]

I wouldnt write anything that carries out a denial of service attack on a network service like that..

Not sure what that means. Sorry.

 

[FrankenPC]

The advantage of running a service is the service will continue to function even if the desktop user is logged out. If you know the desktop will always be logged in, you can make life a whole lot easier by building a normal desktop app with a test harness (mocked up GUI interface for debugging purposes). Then, you can run that app as a scheduled event if you like. Schedule it to run when someone logs in for instance.

As far as simultaneous connections, I believe that limitation is relative to the SAM (security accounts manager). That's the max number of inbound NT accounts which can access local resources. I don't think this scenario applies to you as you are doing outbound polling and collecting the data yourself. I could be wrong.