network variable burden on the server side

[plarq]

I have a project involving communication between two PCs running different data acquisition. PC1 is master and PC2 is the slave and they both run basic LV 2012 SP1. In each test cycle, the master send out parameters via a shared variable to the slave machine, then runs a timing sequence of operations. PC2 will then acquire the data independently. The test cycle is about 20-30s, so the communcation is infrequent and data size is small, and the latency is unimportant. However, since PC1 is running a timing sequence, I don't want PC2's polling increase burden on PC1's CPU.

Currently I'm using NI PSP binded front panel controls and indicators on both PC's VIs, and set PC1 as the server of shared variable.  PC1 updates the shared variable every test cycle, and PC2 reads the shared variable control every 100ms. Although, I noticed that the PC2's shared-variable binded control will always update to the new value even if the control is not executed at all.

 I have read the post http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Can-I-use-the-timestamp-of-a-Network-published-global-variable/m-p/3... about polling variable will not increase the network traffic, but does polling increase the server CPU load?

Edit: a conceptual diagram of server and client are as follows: