Performance analysis of the TCP/IP protocol under UNIX operatingsystems for high performance computing and communications

摘要

Among many protocols, the TCP/IP protocol suite is the most widelyused form of networking computers. With the advent of high-speedcommunication paradigms such as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and theadvances of transmission media technologies such as optical fibers, thephysical transmission medium is no longer the performance bottleneck incommunication systems. Thus, transport layers are currently receivingmuch attention, since they don't seem to convey the large bandwidths ofthe lower layers to the application users properly. Many other transportprotocols have been proposed and implemented, which might perform betterthan TCP/IP. However, due to the popularity of TCP/IP, no otherprotocols seem to ready to take its place in the near future. Thus,emerging bandwidth-hungry applications steadily require higher andhigher TCP/IP performance. In this paper, we analyze the performance ofTCP/IP under the UNIX operating system in exchanging data once aconnection is established. By measuring accurate data for the variousaspects of the protocol implementation, we clearly illustrate the majorbottlenecks and determine the upper bounds on performance. We alsomeasure memory bandwidth requirements in processing high-speed TCP/IP.Empirical results show that the TCP/IP protocol itself can handle up to85 Mbps to process data under the UNIX operating system when a properdata link layer interface is provided, requiring a memory bandwidth of172 MByte/s