Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!enea!ttds!rajaei
From: rajaei@ttds.UUCP (Hassan Rajaei)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: maximum Ethernet throughput
Message-ID: <1156@ttds.UUCP>
Date: 11 Mar 88 16:54:05 GMT
References: <8803012359.AA00957@acetes.dec.com> <412@mn-at1.UUCP>
Reply-To: rajaei@ttds.UUCP (Hassan Rajaei)
Organization: The Royal Inst. of Techn., Stockholm
Lines: 19

In article <412@mn-at1.UUCP> alan@mn-at1.UUCP (0000-Alan Klietz) writes:
>But herein lies the problem.  As machines get faster and bigger, with
>more pipelining and vectorization, and as the host network software
>becomes bigger and more complicated, the per-message processing overhead
>gets more expensive.  And yet the data-links are becoming faster and
>faster.   FDDI is 100+ mbit/s.  The GaAs version will be 1000+ mbit/s.
>The ANSI X3T9 Working Group is developing a spec for a HSC channel rated
>at 1600 mbit/s per second.   The importance of absolutely minimizing
>the host overhead is something that I think is critical to get any sort
>of decent usage of these links (e.g. buffering multiple messages per host
>interrupt). 
>
You are right. We are reaching a point that a host machine no longer can
cope with the communication problems alone. We have to offload the host as
much as we can by introducing dedicated communications system rather than
some simple board. The protocol engines are something to think about.

Hassan Rajaei
rajaei@ttds.tds.kth.se