Analysis of SCTP and TCP based communication in high-speed clusters

Performance and financial constraints are pushing modern DAQs (Data Acquisition Systems) to use distributed cluster environments instead of monolith one-box systems. Inside clusters application communication layers should support outstanding high performance requirements. We are currently investigating different network protocols that could meet the requirements of high speed/low latency peer-to-peer communication within DAQ clusters. We have carried out various performance measurements with TCP and SCTP over Fast and Gigabit Ethernet. We are focusing on Ethernet Technologies, because this transport medium is broad deployed, cost efficient and it has much better cost/throughput ratio than other available communication alternatives (e.g.: Myrinet, Infiniband). During this study, a protocol performance measurement application with different peer transport components has been developed. In the first part of the paper, we give a short comparison of the two protocols (SCTP and TCP), and an introduction of the transport layer structure developed. Later on we discuss the performance results of single/multi-stream peer-to-peer communication, give overview about application code transition possibilities from application developer point of view between the two protocols, and draw conclusions about usability.