Performance of high-speed network I/O subsystems case study of a fibre channel network

• Published in: Proceedings of the 1994 ACM/IEEE conference on Supercomputing pp. 174 - 183
• Main Authors: Lin, Mengjou, Hsieh, Jenwei, Du, David H. C., MacDonald, James A.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Los Alamitos, CA, USA IEEE Computer Society Press 14-11-1994
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: General and reference; General and reference > Cross-computing tools and techniques; General and reference > Cross-computing tools and techniques > Performance; Networks; Networks > Network protocols; Social and professional topics; Social and professional topics > Professional topics; Social and professional topics > Professional topics > Computing profession; Social and professional topics > Professional topics > Computing profession > Testing, certification and licensing; I/O subsystem; host interface; performance evlauation; fibre channel
• ISBN: 0818666056; 9780818666056
• DOI: 10.5555/602770.602804

Emerging high-speed networks provide several hundred megabits per second to several gigabits per second of raw communication bandwidth. However, the maximum achievable throughput available to the end-user or application is quite limited. In order to fully utilize the network bandwidth and to improve the performance at the application level, a careful examination of I/O subsystems is essential. In this paper, we study one emerging high-speed network, the Fibre Channel network. The objectives of this study are: 1) to understand how the I/O subsystem relates to network operations, 2) to evaluate and analyze the performance of such a subsystem, and 3) to propose possible approaches for improving the maximum achievable bandwidth. We will show (by simply modifying device driver code) a 75% maximum achievable bandwidth improvement. Other ways of improving network performance are also discussed.