I am looking for a chat program using the browser --no Java or client software. And I found POE. It looks to be such a perfect tool!
Basically, I am planning to write a HTTPD chat server that delivers a frame page consists of three windows (a) main chat stream window, (b) user list window and (c) message post window. The main stream window will be long-live opened for clients; and POE seems provide the feature in a natural way. In theory, it could also be implemented in mod_perl or php, but Apache has an intrinsic problem due to the fork model; say, each child forked in mod_perl takes at least 10M memory, so on a typical Unix box with a few G rams, we are limited to serve only 200-400 clients. I have several questions: 1) is such a idea practically workable ? 2) how stable is the server based on POE-Component-Server-HTTP ? 3) if it is stable, how many simultaneous clients can be expected ? Thanks. Pod
