An analytic/empirical study of distributed sorting on a local area network

A model for distributed sorting on a local area network (LAN) is presented. This model, contrary to the conventional model, takes into account both local processing time and communication time. This model is intended to provide a framework within which the performances of various distributed sorting algorithms are analyzed and implemented on Ethernet-connected Sun workstations. The empirical results by and large agree with the predictions derivable from the model. They show that local processing, particularly sorting of local subfiles, dominates the whole process, as far as response time is concerned. All algorithms examined have similar asymptotic behavior for large files. For medium-sized files, the degree of communication parallelism has a great impact on algorithm performance