Experiences with gigabit/s lans on commodity pcs
Sherali Zeadally, Liqiang Zhang · 2003
The increasing demand for high- performance voice, video, image and data communica- tion networks has challenged researchers to design in- iiovative network architectures and network interfaces. Improvements in processor and network performances, along with memory availability, are enabling support for high-performance applications such as scientific visual- ization, video conferencing, and audiolvideo streaming on the World Wide Web. We have witnessed consider- able efforts over the last few years to improve the per- formance of network-based applications running over , high-speed networks. This paper explores experimen- tally the performance benefits to application develop- ers of a network interface architecture designed primar- ily for enabling high-performance, low-latency applica- tions using minimal host processor cycles. We compare the performance of the network interface architecture with the traditional network interface architecture, us- ing commodity PCs connected by gigahit local area net- works running protocols such as TCP/IP. We argue that such an architecture will eliminate the current bottle- necks in end-systems connected to gigahit networks and consequently allows users to reap the full benefits of high-speed networks available today.