  The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) control
system uses a nameserver to reduce system response time and to minimize the
impact of client name resolution on front-end computers. The control system is
based on the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS), which
uses name-based broadcasts to initiate data communication. By default, when
EPICS process variables (PV) are requested by client applications, all
front-end computers receive the broadcasts and perform name resolution
processing against local channel name lists. The nameserver is used to offload
the name resolution task to a single node. This processing, formerly done on
all front-end computers, is now done only by the nameserver. In a control
system with heavily loaded front-end computers and high peak client connection
loads, a significant performance improvement is seen. This paper describes the
name server in more detail, and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of
making name resolution a centralized service.
