Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utah.edu!haas
From: haas@cs.utah.edu (Walt Haas)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: LAN benchmarking
Message-ID: <1989Nov21.232507.12613@hellgate.utah.edu>
Date: 22 Nov 89 06:25:07 GMT
References: <28@altos86.Altos.COM>
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 17

In article <28@altos86.Altos.COM> larree@Altos.COM (Larry Snyder) writes:
>I am looking for ways of describing network performance in terms
>which can be easily compared to other systems and configurations.

Well I've found it important to not stop at a simple packets/second or
bytes/second figure.  Another important property is the ability to handle
bursts of closely spaced packets.  Some devices drop packets closer than
X microseconds; this value is frequently more important than the average
sustained throughput.   Other devices can only buffer up Y packets at
minimal spacing before losing packets.

Another figure of merit that's very important in interactive use is the
ability to return a quick response to the user's keystroke.  In some cases
minimizing this response time will reduce other performance figures, such
as average throughput.

Cheers  -- Walt