Running 16-bit Program Over Network

[MrControversial]

Where I work we're using a soon-to-be-upgraded Practice Management System that was designed for a 16-bit DOS environment. Of course, since the majority of our computers are Windows 2000 and above (which doesn't support DOS natively), the program runs using the NTVDM.exe 16-bit virutal machine.

When running NTVDM.exe, the processor utilization goes up to 100% but over a WAN latency is negligible, however, over a WAN starting up the 16-bit program takes a long time. But, once it starts, it runs fine mostly except when some processing needs to be done. My question is: Is it a WAN issue or a software issue? I'm suspecting a software issue because the data being passed isn't exactly huge. I'm talking bytes.

Has anyone ever tried networking two NT or above computers over the Internet and running a DOS app? This is the test case: Put a DOS app on one PC and share the folder that it's located in. Connect a remote computer to that folder and run the app. Is it slow for you?

I suspect that once we upgrade the software to a 32-bit native Windows environment, the problem will go away. I just need to make sure.

 

[spikespiegal]

Depends on the DOS app and what it's doing. If the executable doesn't require anything else to run, it should launch quickly. If it requires a bunch of other modules and files to run, these have to get pushed down through the network, and performance suffers.

A WAN is going to kill database performance, unless the client is designed to take into account the latency and do heavy buffering. Doesn't matter if it's SQL or Btrieve, or just opening some massive Excel Spreadsheet.

This is why web based apps are so popular because the code stays centralized while only HTTP gets passed to the client station. Or Terminal Services, but I woulnd't mix a CPU killing NTVDM session with it.

You can try www.tamedos.com if the high CPU utilization is a problem.