These tutorials assume that you are either running MultiFinder or System 7.0.0 or above.
Generally applicable notes:
1) Make sure that the Serial of Champions INIT has actually been installed by looking
for its icon when you restart your machine.
2) Make sure that you've configured Serial of Champions to monitor the
communications application you plan on using and the port you plan on using.
3) Make sure that your Serial of Champions Session Log has not grown too large. It
takes quite a few sessions to make a big Session Log so this is not a big deal.
4) When you do a "Snap Statistics" to capture a special set of statistics to the Session
log, note the current clock time so you can find the record more easily when you
subsequently look at the Session log.
5) When you do a "Snap Statistics" and then immediately go and look at the session log,
the record you "Snapped" will the last one in the log. Serial of Champions
automatically positions the Log window at the last (most recently written) session
record.
How to gather statistics for a portion of a communications session:
1) Launch your communications application.
2) Launch the Serial of Champions application.
3) Show the Serial of Champions Status window for the port the comm. application is
using (look in the "Windows" menu)
4) Switch back to your communications application and do what you need to do to bring
yourself up to the start of the part of your session for which you wish to gather
statistics.
5) Start the "thing" you wish to time and immediately switch back to the Serial of
Champions application and do a "Reset Statistics" command from the "Sessions"
menu. (The short-cut key sequence is Command-R).
6) At this point, you can either switch back to your communications app. or stay in
Serial of Champions. I usually set up the communications app and Serial of
Champions Status windows so that I can see both at the same time without
switching apps.
7) When you reach the end of the part of the session you wish to time, switch to Serial
of Champions (if you are not already there) and do a "Snap Statistics" command from
the "Session" menu. This writes the current statistics values in a session record to
the default Session Log File and you are done. You might note the time at this point
so that you can identify the specific log record when you go to look at it.
8) You can now look at the record in the Session log using the "Current Log" command
in the "Windows" menu. The log is automatically positioned at the most recent
session record in the log (this may be the one you want, if no other records were
written after you did the "Snap Statistics" command). Unless you've done other
subsequent "Snap Statistics" the record will either be the last one in the file or
the one just prior. It can get confusing if you've written a lot of session records to
the Session log using "Snap Statistics".
How to gather statistics for a file transfer:
1) Follow instructions 1 through 4 above for "How to gather statistics for a portion
of a communications session" stopping at the point in your session where you are
ready to start the file transfer.
2) Start the file transfer.
3) Immediately switch to Serial of Champions and do a "Reset Session" (Command-R).
4) Switch back to your communications app or, if you've set up your windows so
that you can see the communications app's transfer status window, just stay in
Serial of Champions.
5) Watch the file transfer status in you communications application. Just before the
file transfer ends, switch to Serial of Champions and select "Snap Statistics" from
the "Session" menu (or do the Command-S shortcut).
6) You can use the "Log Window" command in the "Windows" menu to view the
resulting session log record.
How to compare two file transfer methods:
To compare two (or more) file transfer methods, the "bits-per-second" (or bps) value Serial of Champions reports is the most straightforward metric to use. To get a representative effective bps value for a particular file transfer, first choose a large file (100K or more) to transfer as your "test" file. Then, using the techniques described above to capture statistics for a file transfer with the following exceptions:
- don't do the initial "Reset Statistics" until the file transfer is well under way
(a few kilobytes transfered).
- you don't need to wait until the transfer is near completion to "Snap Statistics".
You don't really care about how long the transfer takes from beginning to end, you
merely want a reliable effective bps value for comparision. You can watch the
Status window and let the transfer proceed until the bits-per-second value seems
to stabilize. You can then "Snap Statistics" and kill the transfer.
Repeat this process for each file transfer situation (transfer protocol type, communications app, baud rate, etc). You can then compare the resulting bps rates to see which is the fastest.
You should keep in mind that if you are doing communications testing in an "uncontrolled" environment (like using a commercial network service), many factors other than those you might want to test may affect the statistics. If you must do this, try to use the "uncontrolled" environment during times when you know that its response is likely to be consistent. You might also want to repeat each test situation several times to average out "inconsistencies".
Ahhhhh, the joy of benchmarking. Just be glad you don't have to do it for those product comparison articles you are always seeing in magazines (and pity those who have to do them).
