Are all .Net Obfuscators equal in speed terms?

Question

I currently use the free obfuscation tool that ships with VS and it does what I need but my program seems slower after obfuscation, are other ofuscators any better?

Thanks

Answer 1

Seems slower? Benchmark it. Prove that you actually have a problem before trying to solve it.

I doubt that all obfuscators will have the same performance characteristics, but I also doubt that anyone can really predict what effect any particular one will have on a real-world app without trying it. Write a good benchmark and you'll be able to get the evidence you need to make a genuinely informed decision.

Answer 2

I would argue it would be unlikely that an obfuscated program would be slower. You do realise that an obsfucator only renames methods, variables, deletes debug info etc, the byte code pretty much remains the same. There is no logical reason that it should be slower, obfuscators are dumb and cannot rewrite parts of your code and they certainly are not a library that gets sucked in to provide features.