lan component expose via ejb, or servlet or rmi

hi

we have a working component that does data encryption. it talks to a hsm. so its client-webapp-jvm ---talks-to--> component-in-its-own-jvm ---talks-to--> hsm

We use it via a custom home grown client library that uses a socket cache to connect to the component deployed on another system on our lan built using quickserver.org

Works great for 3-4 TPS for a few days and then we have memory and occasionally socket issues.

we are right now mostly on windows and slowly migrating to linux (next 6-8 months hope to be all linux)

We are trying to improve performance, one idea is to put the component in our own jvm.

As a fall back - want to improve the component. does anyone have bench marks ? should we use a plain GenericServlet under jboss since its all in the same lan - and is there any open source client out there for that?

or use ejb or rmi?

FYI java 1.6 with the client web app on jboss 4

thank you