Performance issues using differing authentication methods

Alex Webb

I have been investigating using different authentication methods when creating LLSession objects as follows:

1) Using NTLM authentication through port 80; and

2) Using Livelink account authentication through port 2099.

The NTLM authentication creates the LLSession object to Livelink without providing any user accounts or passwords explicitly. The LLSession object is created under the user running the application.

The Livelink account authentication creates the LLSession object by passing in a Livelink account and it's password.

With using these two methods I am getting very different performances when adding a document to a folder in Livelink. Using NTLM adding a document takes about 12 seconds, whereas using Livelink account authentication adding a document takes about 0.3 seconds!

Can anyone help explain why this vast difference in performance and advise ways to use/configure NTLM authentication without the performance hit? Sample VB .NET project attached that demonstrates this issue and how we are using LAPI.

LivelinkAddDocument.zip

Ferdinand Prantl

The authentication type may not be the decisive criterium here. Your NTLM scenario uses the CGI "man-in-the-middle" to communicate with Livelink (livelink.exe relays the requests to llserver.exe over HTTP), while the Admin scenario connects directly to the Livelink server process (over TCP). I experienced a noticeable performance drop when communicating with Livelink via CGI or ISAPI components.

If you authenticate plainly with or without user impersonation over HTTP you will see no difference between that and the implicit NTML authentication. You can probably improve the performance by tuning you web server. Or use the direct TCP connection. (We recommend the latter for our archiving services that need to work as fast as possible.)

   --- Ferda