Performance evaluation of an off-host communications architecture

Author

Michel, Jeffrey R. ; Waterman, Alexander S. ; Weaver, Alfred C.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Virginia Univ., Charlottesville, VA, USA

fYear

1993

fDate

19-22 Sep 1993

Firstpage

414

Lastpage

422

Abstract

The Computer Networks Laboratory at the University of Virginia has implemented the SAFENET lightweight protocol suite on the Navy´s Desktop Tactical Computer (DTC-2). One of the research questions was whether to embed XTP in the DTC-2´s UNIX kernel or run XTP on an attached processor on the DTC-2´s VMEbus. Both strategies were implemented and the attached processor approach proved to have somewhat higher performance. The hardware and software system environment is surveyed, the performance achieved at the media access controller (MAC), transport, and user levels is reported, and an analytic model for predicting throughput and latency as a functon of vendor-provided or easily measured system parameters is developed. The authors´ conclusions identify both the advantages and performance concerns inherent to off-host protocol execution

Keywords

access protocols; metropolitan area networks; performance evaluation; SAFENET lightweight protocol; UNIX kernel; VMEbus; XTP; analytic model; latency; media access controller; off-host communications architecture; throughput; Computer architecture; Computer networks; Hardware; Kernel; Laboratories; Performance analysis; Predictive models; Protocols; Software systems; Throughput;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Local Computer Networks, 1993., Proceedings., 18th Conference on

Conference_Location

Minneapolis, MN

ISSN

0742-1303

Print_ISBN

0-8186-4510-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/LCN.1993.591250

Filename

591250