B(its) T(o the) U(ser): a Communication Benchmark Proposal
Kurt J. Maly, Ajay Kumar Gupta, Satish Mynam, Sanjay Khanna · 1995
In this paper we propose a communication benchmark suite: BTU(Bits To the User). Our benchmark does not test the maximum performance of a workstation in a homogeneous network under ideal circumstances. Rather, we take a vendor supplied workstation running UNIX 3 operating system, install our benchmark program and connect the workstation to a blackbox testbed which emulates a LAN connected to a WAN. The benchmark run will submit the workstation to a carefully designed combination of tests. The result is an indicator of what the user, at the application level, can expect in terms of bits sent to or received from a remote host. Our benchmark, in contrast to maximum performance tests, takes into account concurrent activities, such as CPU and I/O activities, which compete for resources on the test machine and concurrent activities on the network which will interfere with the test machine's communication. On the one hand we intend these results for the workstation buyer who can us...