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- Network Working Group M. Lambert
- Request for Comments: 1030 M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science
- November 1987
-
-
- On Testing the NETBLT Protocol over Divers Networks
-
-
- STATUS OF THIS MEMO
-
- This RFC describes the results gathered from testing NETBLT over
- three networks of differing bandwidths and round-trip delays. While
- the results are not complete, the information gathered so far has
- been very promising and supports RFC-998's assertion that that NETBLT
- can provide very high throughput over networks with very different
- characteristics. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
-
- 1. Introduction
-
- NETBLT (NETwork BLock Transfer) is a transport level protocol
- intended for the rapid transfer of a large quantity of data between
- computers. It provides a transfer that is reliable and flow
- controlled, and is designed to provide maximum throughput over a wide
- variety of networks. The NETBLT protocol is specified in RFC-998;
- this document assumes an understanding of the specification as
- described in RFC-998.
-
- Tests over three different networks are described in this document.
- The first network, a 10 megabit-per-second Proteon Token Ring, served
- as a "reference environment" to determine NETBLT's best possible
- performance. The second network, a 10 megabit-per-second Ethernet,
- served as an access path to the third network, the 3 megabit-per-
- second Wideband satellite network. Determining NETBLT's performance
- over the Ethernet allowed us to account for Ethernet-caused behaviour
- in NETBLT transfers that used the Wideband network. Test results for
- each network are described in separate sections. The final section
- presents some conclusions and further directions of research. The
- document's appendices list test results in detail.
-
- 2. Acknowledgements
-
- Many thanks are due Bob Braden, Stephen Casner, and Annette DeSchon
- of ISI for the time they spent analyzing and commenting on test
- results gathered at the ISI end of the NETBLT Wideband network tests.
- Bob Braden was also responsible for porting the IBM PC/AT NETBLT
- implementation to a SUN-3 workstation running UNIX. Thanks are also
- due Mike Brescia, Steven Storch, Claudio Topolcic and others at BBN
- who provided much useful information about the Wideband network, and
-
-
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- RFC 1030 Testing the NETBLT Protocol November 1987
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- helped monitor it during testing.
-
- 3. Implementations and Test Programs
-
- This section briefly describes the NETBLT implementations and test
- programs used in the testing. Currently, NETBLT runs on three
- machine types: Symbolics LISP machines, IBM PC/ATs, and SUN-3s. The
- test results described in this paper were gathered using the IBM
- PC/AT and SUN-3 NETBLT implementations. The IBM and SUN
- implementations are very similar; most differences lie in timer and
- multi-tasking library implementations. The SUN NETBLT implementation
- uses UNIX's user-accessible raw IP socket; it is not implemented in
- the UNIX kernel.
-
- The test application performs a simple memory-to-memory transfer of
- an arbitrary amount of data. All data are actually allocated by the
- application, given to the protocol layer, and copied into NETBLT
- packets. The results are therefore fairly realistic and, with
- appropriately large amounts of buffering, could be attained by disk-
- based applications as well.
-
- The test application provides several parameters that can be varied
- to alter NETBLT's performance characteristics. The most important of
- these parameters are:
-
-
- burst interval The number of milliseconds from the start of one
- burst transmission to the start of the next burst
- transmission.
-
-
- burst size The number of packets transmitted per burst.
-
-
- buffer size The number of bytes in a NETBLT buffer (all
- buffers must be the same size, save the last,
- which can be any size required to complete the
- transfer).
-
-
- data packet size
- The number of bytes contained in a NETBLT DATA
- packet's data segment.
-
-
- number of outstanding buffers
- The number of buffers which can be in
- transmission/error recovery at any given moment.
-
-
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- RFC 1030 Testing the NETBLT Protocol November 1987
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-
- The protocol's throughput is measured in two ways. First, the "real
- throughput" is throughput as viewed by the user: the number of bits
- transferred divided by the time from program start to program finish.
- Although this is a useful measurement from the user's point of view,
- another throughput measurement is more useful for analyzing NETBLT's
- performance. The "steady-state throughput" is the rate at which data
- is transmitted as the transfer size approaches infinity. It does not
- take into account connection setup time, and (more importantly), does
- not take into account the time spent recovering from packet-loss
- errors that occur after the last buffer in the transmission is sent
- out. For NETBLT transfers using networks with long round-trip delays
- (and consequently with large numbers of outstanding buffers), this
- "late" recovery phase can add large amounts of time to the
- transmission, time which does not reflect NETBLT's peak transmission
- rate. The throughputs listed in the test cases that follow are all
- steady-state throughputs.
-
- 4. Implementation Performance
-
- This section describes the theoretical performance of the IBM PC/AT
- NETBLT implementation on both the transmitting and receiving sides.
- Theoretical performance was measured on two LANs: a 10 megabit-per-
- second Proteon Token Ring and a 10 megabit-per-second Ethernet.
- "Theoretical performance" is defined to be the performance achieved
- if the sending NETBLT did nothing but transmit data packets, and the
- receiving NETBLT did nothing but receive data packets.
-
- Measuring the send-side's theoretical performance is fairly easy,
- since the sending NETBLT does very little more than transmit packets
- at a predetermined rate. There are few, if any, factors which can
- influence the processing speed one way or another.
-
- Using a Proteon P1300 interface on a Proteon Token Ring, the IBM
- PC/AT NETBLT implementation can copy a maximum-sized packet (1990
- bytes excluding protocol headers) from NETBLT buffer to NETBLT data
- packet, format the packet header, and transmit the packet onto the
- network in about 8 milliseconds. This translates to a maximum
- theoretical throughput of 1.99 megabits per second.
-
- Using a 3COM 3C500 interface on an Ethernet LAN, the same
- implementation can transmit a maximum-sized packet (1438 bytes
- excluding protocol headers) in 6.0 milliseconds, for a maximum
- theoretical throughput of 1.92 megabits per second.
-
- Measuring the receive-side's theoretical performance is more
- difficult. Since all timer management and message ACK overhead is
- incurred at the receiving NETBLT's end, the processing speed can be
- slightly slower than the sending NETBLT's processing speed (this does
-
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- RFC 1030 Testing the NETBLT Protocol November 1987
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- not even take into account the demultiplexing overhead that the
- receiver incurs while matching packets with protocol handling
- functions and connections). In fact, the amount by which the two
- processing speeds differ is dependent on several factors, the most
- important of which are: length of the NETBLT buffer list, the number
- of data timers which may need to be set, and the number of control
- messages which are ACKed by the data packet. Almost all of this
- added overhead is directly related to the number of outstanding
- buffers allowable during the transfer. The fewer the number of
- outstanding buffers, the shorter the NETBLT buffer list, and the
- faster a scan through the buffer list and the shorter the list of
- unacknowledged control messages.
-
- Assuming a single-outstanding-buffer transfer, the receiving-side
- NETBLT can DMA a maximum-sized data packet from the Proteon Token
- Ring into its network interface, copy it from the interface into a
- packet buffer and finally copy the packet into the correct NETBLT
- buffer in 8 milliseconds: the same speed as the sender of data.
-
- Under the same conditions, the implementation can receive a maximum-
- sized packet from the Ethernet in 6.1 milliseconds, for a maximum
- theoretical throughput of 1.89 megabits per second.
-
- 5. Testing on a Proteon Token Ring
-
- The Proteon Token Ring used for testing is a 10 megabit-per-second
- LAN supporting about 40 hosts. The machines on either end of the
- transfer were IBM PC/ATs using Proteon P1300 network interfaces. The
- Token Ring provides high bandwidth with low round-trip delay and
- negligible packet loss, a good debugging environment in situations
- where packet loss, packet reordering, and long round-trip time would
- hinder debugging. Also contributing to high performance is the large
- (maximum 2046 bytes) network MTU. The larger packets take somewhat
- longer to transmit than do smaller packets (8 milliseconds per 2046
- byte packet versus 6 milliseconds per 1500 byte packet), but the
- lessened per-byte computational overhead increases throughput
- somewhat.
-
- The fastest single-outstanding-buffer transmission rate was 1.49
- megabits per second, and was achieved using a test case with the
- following parameters:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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- transfer size 2-5 million bytes
-
-
- data packet size
- 1990 bytes
-
-
- buffer size 19900 bytes
-
-
- burst size 5 packets
-
-
- burst interval 40 milliseconds. The timer code on the IBM PC/AT
- is accurate to within 1 millisecond, so a 40
- millisecond burst can be timed very accurately.
-
- Allowing only one outstanding buffer reduced the protocol to running
- "lock-step" (the receiver of data sends a GO, the sender sends data,
- the receiver sends an OK, followed by a GO for the next buffer).
- Since the lock-step test incurred one round-trip-delay's worth of
- overhead per buffer (between transmission of a buffer's last data
- packet and receipt of an OK for that buffer/GO for the next buffer),
- a test with two outstanding buffers (providing essentially constant
- packet transmission) should have resulted in higher throughput.
-
- A second test, this time with two outstanding buffers, was performed,
- with the above parameters identical save for an increased burst
- interval of 43 milliseconds. The highest throughput recorded was
- 1.75 megabits per second. This represents 95% efficiency (5 1990-
- byte packets every 43 milliseconds gives a maximum theoretical
- throughput of 1.85 megabits per second). The increase in throughput
- over a single-outstanding-buffer transmission occurs because, with
- two outstanding buffers, there is no round-trip-delay lag between
- buffer transmissions and the sending NETBLT can transmit constantly.
- Because the P1300 interface can transmit and receive concurrently, no
- packets were dropped due to collision on the interface.
-
- As mentioned previously, the minimum transmission time for a
- maximum-sized packet on the Proteon Ring is 8 milliseconds. One
- would expect, therefore, that the maximum throughput for a double-
- buffered transmission would occur with a burst interval of 8
- milliseconds times 5 packets per burst, or 40 milliseconds. This
- would allow the sender of data to transmit bursts with no "dead time"
- in between bursts. Unfortunately, the sender of data must take time
- to process incoming control messages, which typically forces a 2-3
- millisecond gap between bursts, lowering the throughput. With a
- burst interval of 43 milliseconds, the incoming packets are processed
-
-
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- during the 3 millisecond-per-burst "dead time", making the protocol
- more efficient.
-
- 6. Testing on an Ethernet
-
- The network used in performing this series of tests was a 10 megabit
- per second Ethernet supporting about 150 hosts. The machines at
- either end of the NETBLT connection were IBM PC/ATs using 3COM 3C500
- network interfaces. As with the Proteon Token Ring, the Ethernet
- provides high bandwidth with low delay. Unfortunately, the
- particular Ethernet used for testing (MIT's infamous Subnet 26) is
- known for being somewhat noisy. In addition, the 3COM 3C500 Ethernet
- interfaces are relatively unsophisticated, with only a single
- hardware packet buffer for both transmitting and receiving packets.
- This gives the interface an annoying tendency to drop packets under
- heavy load. The combination of these factors made protocol
- performance analysis somewhat more difficult than on the Proteon
- Ring.
-
- The fastest single-buffer transmission rate was 1.45 megabits per
- second, and was achieved using a test case with the following
- parameters:
-
- transfer size 2-5 million bytes
-
-
- data packet size
- 1438 bytes (maximum size excluding protocol
- headers).
-
-
- buffer size 14380 bytes
-
-
- burst size 5 packets
-
-
- burst interval 30 milliseconds (6.0 milliseconds x 5 packets).
-
- A second test, this one with parameters identical to the first save
- for number of outstanding buffers (2 instead of 1) resulted in
- substantially lower throughput (994 kilobits per second), with a
- large number of packets retransmitted (10%). The retransmissions
- occurred because the 3COM 3C500 network interface has only one
- hardware packet buffer and cannot hold a transmitting and receiving
- packet at the same time. With two outstanding buffers, the sender of
- data can transmit constantly; this means that when the receiver of
- data attempts to send a packet, its interface's receive hardware goes
-
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- deaf to the network and any packets being transmitted at the time by
- the sender of data are lost. A symmetrical problem occurs with
- control messages sent from receiver of data to sender of data, but
- the number of control messages sent is small enough and the
- retransmission algorithm redundant enough that little performance
- degradation occurs due to control message loss.
-
- When the burst interval was lengthened from 30 milliseconds per 5
- packet burst to 45 milliseconds per 5 packet burst, a third as many
- packets were dropped, and throughput climbed accordingly, to 1.12
- megabits per second. Presumably, the longer burst interval allowed
- more dead time between bursts and less likelihood of the receiver of
- data's interface being deaf to the net while the sender of data was
- sending a packet. An interesting note is that, when the same test
- was conducted on a special Ethernet LAN with the only two hosts
- attached being the two NETBLT machines, no packets were dropped once
- the burst interval rose above 40 milliseconds/5 packet burst. The
- improved performance was doubtless due to the absence of extra
- network traffic.
-
- 7. Testing on the Wideband Network
-
- The following section describes results gathered using the Wideband
- network. The Wideband network is a satellite-based network with ten
- stations competing for a raw satellite channel bandwidth of 3
- megabits per second. Since the various tests resulted in substantial
- changes to the NETBLT specification and implementation, some of the
- major changes are described along with the results and problems that
- forced those changes.
-
- The Wideband network has several characteristics that make it an
- excellent environment for testing NETBLT. First, it has an extremely
- long round-trip delay (1.8 seconds). This provides a good test of
- NETBLT's rate control and multiple-buffering capabilities. NETBLT's
- rate control allows the packet transmission rate to be regulated
- independently of the maximum allowable amount of outstanding data,
- providing flow control as well as very large "windows". NETBLT's
- multiple-buffering capability enables data to still be transmitted
- while earlier data are awaiting retransmission and subsequent data
- are being prepared for transmission. On a network with a long
- round-trip delay, the alternative "lock-step" approach would require
- a 1.8 second gap between each buffer transmission, degrading
- performance.
-
- Another interesting characteristic of the Wideband network is its
- throughput. Although its raw bandwidth is 3 megabits per second, at
- the time of these tests fully 2/3 of that was consumed by low-level
- network overhead and hardware limitations. (A detailed analysis of
-
-
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-
- the overhead appears at the end of this document.) This reduces the
- available bandwidth to just over 1 megabit per second. Since the
- NETBLT implementation can run substantially faster than that, testing
- over the Wideband net allows us to measure NETBLT's ability to
- utilize very high percentages of available bandwidth.
-
- Finally, the Wideband net has some interesting packet reorder and
- delay characteristics that provide a good test of NETBLT's ability to
- deal with these problems.
-
- Testing progressed in several phases. The first phase involved using
- source-routed packets in a path from an IBM PC/AT on MIT's Subnet 26,
- through a BBN Butterfly Gateway, over a T1 link to BBN, onto the
- Wideband network, back down into a BBN Voice Funnel, and onto ISI's
- Ethernet to another IBM PC/AT. Testing proceeded fairly slowly, due
- to gateway software and source-routing bugs. Once a connection was
- finally established, we recorded a best throughput of approximately
- 90K bits per second.
-
- Several problems contributed to the low throughput. First, the
- gateways at either end were forwarding packets onto their respective
- LANs faster than the IBM PC/AT's could accept them (the 3COM 3C500
- interface would not have time to re-enable input before another
- packet would arrive from the gateway). Even with bursts of size 1,
- spaced 6 milliseconds apart, the gateways would aggregate groups of
- packets coming from the same satellite frame, and send them faster
- than the PC could receive them. The obvious result was many dropped
- packets, and degraded performance. Also, the half-duplex nature of
- the 3COM interface caused incoming packets to be dropped when packets
- were being sent.
-
- The number of packets dropped on the sending NETBLT side due to the
- long interface re-enable time was reduced by packing as many control
- messages as possible into a single control packet (rather than
- placing only one message in a control packet). This reduced the
- number of control packets transmitted to one per buffer transmission,
- which the PC was able to handle. In particular, messages of the form
- OK(n) were combined with messages of the form GO(n + 1), in order to
- prevent two control packets from arriving too close together to both
- be received.
-
- Performance degradation from dropped control packets was also
- minimized by changing to a highly redundant control packet
- transmission algorithm. Control messages are now stored in a single
- long-lived packet, with ACKed messages continuously bumped off the
- head of the packet and new messages added at the tail of the packet.
- Every time a new message needs to be transmitted, any unACKed old
- messages are transmitted as well. The sending NETBLT, which receives
-
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-
- these control messages, is tuned to ignore duplicate messages with
- almost no overhead. This transmission redundancy puts little
- reliance on the NETBLT control timer, further reducing performance
- degradation from lost control packets.
-
- Although the effect of dropped packets on the receiving NETBLT could
- not be completely eliminated, it was reduced somewhat by some changes
- to the implementation. Data packets from the sending NETBLT are
- guaranteed to be transmitted by buffer number, lowest number first.
- In some cases, this allowed the receiving NETBLT to make retransmit-
- request decisions for a buffer N, if packets for N were expected but
- none were received at the time packets for a buffer N+M were
- received. This optimization was somewhat complicated, but improved
- NETBLT's performance in the face of missing packets. Unfortunately,
- the dropped-packet problem remained until the NETBLT implementation
- was ported to a SUN-3 workstation. The SUN is able to handle the
- incoming packets quite well, dropping only 0.5% of the data packets
- (as opposed to the PC's 15 - 20%).
-
- Another problem with the Wideband network was its tendency to re-
- order and delay packets. Dealing with these problems required
- several changes in the implementation. Previously, the NETBLT
- implementation was "optimized" to generate retransmit requests as
- soon as possible, if possible not relying on expiration of a data
- timer. For instance, when the receiving NETBLT received an LDATA
- packet for a buffer N, and other packets in buffer N had not arrived,
- the receiver would immediately generate a RESEND for the missing
- packets. Similarly, under certain circumstances, the receiver would
- generate a RESEND for a buffer N if packets for N were expected and
- had not arrived before packets for a buffer N+M. Obviously, packet-
- reordering made these "optimizations" generate retransmit requests
- unnecessarily. In the first case, the implementation was changed to
- no longer generate a retransmit request on receipt of an LDATA with
- other packets missing in the buffer. In the second case, a data
- timer was set with an updated (and presumably more accurate) value,
- hopefully allowing any re-ordered packets to arrive before timing out
- and generating a retransmit request.
-
- It is difficult to accommodate Wideband network packet delay in the
- NETBLT implementation. Packet delays tend to occur in multiples of
- 600 milliseconds, due to the Wideband network's datagram reservation
- scheme. A timer value calculation algorithm that used a fixed
- variance on the order of 600 milliseconds would cause performance
- degradation when packets were lost. On the other hand, short fixed
- variance values would not react well to the long delays possible on
- the Wideband net. Our solution has been to use an adaptive data
- timer value calculation algorithm. The algorithm maintains an
- average inter-packet arrival value, and uses that to determine the
-
-
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- data timer value. If the inter-packet arrival time increases, the
- data timer value will lengthen.
-
- At this point, testing proceeded between NETBLT implementations on a
- SUN-3 workstation and an IBM PC/AT. The arrival of a Butterfly
- Gateway at ISI eliminated the need for source-routed packets; some
- performance improvement was also expected because the Butterfly
- Gateway is optimized for IP datagram traffic.
-
- In order to put the best Wideband network test results in context, a
- short analysis follows, showing the best throughput expected on a
- fully loaded channel. Again, a detailed analysis of the numbers that
- follow appears at the end of this document.
-
- The best possible datagram rate over the current Wideband
- configuration is 24,054 bits per channel frame, or 3006 bytes every
- 21.22 milliseconds. Since the transmission route begins and ends on
- an Ethernet, the largest amount of data transmissible (after
- accounting for packet header overhead) is 1438 bytes per packet.
- This translates to approximately 2 packets per frame. Since we want
- to avoid overflowing the channel, we should transmit slightly slower
- than the channel frame rate of 21.2 milliseconds. We therefore came
- up with a best possible throughput of 2 1438-byte packets every 22
- milliseconds, or 1.05 megabits per second.
-
- Because of possible software bugs in either the Butterfly Gateway or
- the BSAT (gateway-to-earth-station interface), 1438-byte packets were
- fragmented before transmission over the Wideband network, causing
- packet delay and poor performance. The best throughput was achieved
- with the following values:
-
- transfer size 500,000 - 750,000 bytes
-
-
- data packet size
- 1432 bytes
-
-
- buffer size 14320 bytes
-
-
- burst size 5 packets
-
-
- burst interval 55 milliseconds
-
- Steady-state throughputs ranged from 926 kilobits per second to 942
- kilobits per second, approximately 90% channel utilization. The
-
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- amount of data transmitted should have been an order of magnitude
- higher, in order to get a longer steady-state period; unfortunately
- at the time we were testing, the Ethernet interface of ISI's
- Butterfly Gateway would lock up fairly quickly (in 40-60 seconds) at
- packet rates of approximately 90 per second, forcing a gateway reset.
- Transmissions therefore had to take less than this amount of time.
- This problem has reportedly been fixed since the tests were
- conducted.
-
- In order to test the Wideband network under overload conditions, we
- attempted several tests at rates of 5 1432-byte packets every 50
- milliseconds. At this rate, the Wideband network ground to a halt as
- four of the ten network BSATs immediately crashed and reset their
- channel processor nodes. Apparently, the BSATs crash because the ESI
- (Earth Station Interface), which sends data from the BSAT to the
- satellite, stops its transmit clock to the BSAT if it runs out of
- buffer space. The BIO interface connecting BSAT and ESI does not
- tolerate this clock-stopping, and typically locks up, forcing the
- channel processor node to reset. A more sophisticated interface,
- allowing faster transmissions, is being installed in the near future.
-
- 8. Future Directions
-
- Some more testing needs to be performed over the Wideband Network in
- order to get a complete analysis of NETBLT's performance. Once the
- Butterfly Gateway Ethernet interface lockup problem described earlier
- has been fixed, we want to perform transmissions of 10 to 50 million
- bytes to get accurate steady-state throughput results. We also want
- to run several NETBLT processes in parallel, each tuned to take a
- fraction of the Wideband Network's available bandwidth. Hopefully,
- this will demonstrate whether or not burst synchronization across
- different NETBLT processes will cause network congestion or failure.
- Once the BIO BSAT-ESI interface is upgraded, we will want to try for
- higher throughputs, as well as greater hardware stability under
- overload conditions.
-
- As far as future directions of research into NETBLT, one important
- area needs to be explored. A series of algorithms need to be
- developed to allow dynamic selection and control of NETBLT's
- transmission parameters (burst size, burst interval, and number of
- outstanding buffers). Ideally, this dynamic control will not require
- any information from outside sources such as gateways; instead,
- NETBLT processes will use end-to-end information in order to make
- transmission rate decisions in the face of noisy channels and network
- congestion. Some research on dynamic rate control is taking place
- now, but much more work needs done before the results can be
- integrated into NETBLT.
-
-
-
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-
- I. Wideband Bandwidth Analysis
-
- Although the raw bandwidth of the Wideband Network is 3 megabits per
- second, currently only about 1 megabit per second of it is available
- to transmit data. The large amount of overhead is due to the channel
- control strategy (which uses a fixed-width control subframe based on
- the maximum number of stations sharing the channel) and the low-
- performance BIO interface between BBN's BSAT (Butterfly Satellite
- Interface) and Linkabit's ESI (Earth Station Interface). Higher-
- performance BSMI interfaces are soon to be installed in all Wideband
- sites, which should improve the amount of available bandwidth.
-
- Bandwidth on the Wideband network is divided up into frames, each of
- which has multiple subframes. A frame is 32768 channel symbols, at 2
- bits per symbol. One frame is available for transmission every 21.22
- milliseconds, giving a raw bandwidth of 65536 bits / 21.22 ms, or
- 3.081 megabits per second.
-
- Each frame contains two subframes, a control subframe and a data
- subframe. The control subframe is subdivided into ten slots, one per
- earth station. Control information takes up 200 symbols per station.
- Because the communications interface between BSAT and ESI only runs
- at 2 megabits per second, there must be a padding interval of 1263
- symbols between each slot of information, bringing the total control
- subframe size up to 1463 symbols x 10 stations, or 14630 symbols.
- The data subframe then has 18138 symbols available. The maximum
- datagram size is currently expressed as a 14-bit quantity, further
- dropping the maximum amount of data in a frame to 16384 symbols.
- After header information is taken into account, this value drops to
- 16,036 symbols. At 2 bits per symbol, using a 3/4 coding rate, the
- actual amount of usable data in a frame is 24,054 bits, or
- approximately 3006 bytes. Thus the theoretical usable bandwidth is
- 24,054 bits every 21.22 milliseconds, or 1.13 megabits per second.
- Since the NETBLT implementations are running on Ethernet LANs
- gatewayed to the Wideband network, the 3006 bytes per channel frame
- of usable bandwidth translates to two maximum-sized (1500 bytes)
- Ethernet packets per channel frame, or 1.045 megabits per second.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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- II. Detailed Proteon Ring LAN Test Results
-
- Following is a table of some of the test results gathered from
- testing NETBLT between two IBM PC/ATs on a Proteon Token Ring LAN.
- The table headers have the following definitions:
-
-
- BS/BI burst size in packets and burst interval in
- milliseconds
-
-
- PSZ number of bytes in DATA/LDATA packet data segment
-
-
- BFSZ number of bytes in NETBLT buffer
-
-
- XFSZ number of kilobytes in transfer
-
-
- NBUFS number of outstanding buffers
-
-
- #LOSS number of data packets lost
-
-
- #RXM number of data packets retransmitted
-
-
- DTMOS number of data timeouts on receiving end
-
-
- SPEED steady-state throughput in megabits per second
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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- BS/BI PSZ BFSZ XFSZ NBUFS #LOSS #RXM DTMOS SPEED
-
- 5/25 1438 14380 1438 1 0 0 0 1.45
- 5/25 1438 14380 1438 1 0 0 0 1.45
- 5/30 1438 14380 1438 1 0 0 0 1.45
- 5/30 1438 14380 1438 1 0 0 0 1.45
- 5/35 1438 14380 1438 1 0 0 0 1.40
- 5/35 1438 14380 1438 1 0 0 0 1.41
- 5/40 1438 14380 1438 1 0 0 0 1.33
- 5/40 1438 14380 1438 1 0 0 0 1.33
-
- 5/25 1438 14380 1438 2 0 0 0 1.62
-
- 5/25 1438 14380 1438 2 0 0 0 1.61
- 5/30 1438 14380 1438 2 0 0 0 1.60
- 5/30 1438 14380 1438 2 0 0 0 1.61
- 5/34 1438 14380 1438 2 0 0 0 1.59
- 5/35 1438 14380 1438 2 0 0 0 1.58
-
- 5/25 1990 19900 1990 1 0 0 0 1.48
- 5/25 1990 19900 1990 1 0 0 0 1.49
- 5/30 1990 19900 1990 1 0 0 0 1.48
- 5/30 1990 19900 1990 1 0 0 0 1.48
- 5/35 1990 19900 1990 1 0 0 0 1.49
- 5/35 1990 19900 1990 1 0 0 0 1.48
- 5/40 1990 19900 1990 1 0 0 0 1.49
- 5/40 1990 19900 1990 1 0 0 0 1.49
- 5/45 1990 19900 1990 1 0 0 0 1.45
- 5/45 1990 19900 1990 1 0 0 0 1.46
-
- 5/25 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.75
- 5/25 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.75
- 5/30 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.74
- 5/30 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.75
- 5/35 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.74
- 5/35 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.74
- 5/40 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.75
- 5/40 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.74
- 5/43 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.75
- 5/43 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.74
- 5/43 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.75
- 5/44 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.73
- 5/44 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.72
- 5/45 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.70
- 5/45 1990 19900 1990 2 0 0 0 1.72
-
-
-
-
-
-
- M. Lambert [Page 14]
-
- RFC 1030 Testing the NETBLT Protocol November 1987
-
-
- III. Detailed Ethernet LAN Testing Results
-
- Following is a table of some of the test results gathered from
- testing NETBLT between two IBM PC/ATs on an Ethernet LAN. See
- previous appendix for table header definitions.
-
-
- BS/BI PSZ BFSZ XFSZ NBUFS #LOSS #RXM DTMOS SPEED
-
- 5/30 1438 14380 1438 1 9 9 6 1.42
- 5/30 1438 14380 1438 1 2 2 2 1.45
- 5/30 1438 14380 1438 1 5 5 4 1.44
- 5/35 1438 14380 1438 1 7 7 7 1.38
- 5/35 1438 14380 1438 1 6 6 5 1.38
- 5/40 1438 14380 1438 1 48 48 44 1.15
- 5/40 1438 14380 1438 1 50 50 38 1.17
- 5/40 1438 14380 1438 1 13 13 11 1.28
- 5/40 1438 14380 1438 1 7 7 5 1.30
-
- 5/30 1438 14380 1438 2 206 206 198 0.995
- 5/30 1438 14380 1438 2 213 213 198 0.994
- 5/40 1438 14380 1438 2 117 121 129 1.05
- 5/40 1438 14380 1438 2 178 181 166 0.892
- 5/40 1438 14380 1438 2 135 138 130 1.03
- 5/45 1438 14380 1438 2 57 57 52 1.12
- 5/45 1438 14380 1438 2 97 97 99 1.02
- 5/45 1438 14380 1438 2 62 62 51 1.09
-
- 5/15 512 10240 2048 1 6 6 4 0.909
- 5/15 512 10240 2048 1 10 11 7 0.907
- 5/18 512 10240 2048 1 11 11 8 0.891
- 5/18 512 10240 2048 1 5 5 9 0.906
- 5/19 512 10240 2048 1 3 3 3 0.905
- 5/19 512 10240 2048 1 8 8 7 0.898
- 5/20 512 10240 2048 1 7 7 4 0.876
- 5/20 512 10240 2048 1 11 12 5 0.871
- 5/20 512 10240 2048 1 8 9 5 0.874
- 5/30 512 10240 2048 2 113 116 84 0.599
- 5/30 512 10240 2048 2 20 20 14 0.661
- 5/30 512 10240 2048 2 49 50 40 0.638
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- M. Lambert [Page 15]
-
- RFC 1030 Testing the NETBLT Protocol November 1987
-
-
- IV. Detailed Wideband Network Testing Results
-
- Following is a table of some of the test results gathered from
- testing NETBLT between an IBM PC/AT and a SUN-3 using the Wideband
- satellite network. See previous appendix for table header
- definitions.
-
- BS/BI PSZ BFSZ XFSZ NBUFS #LOSS #RXM SPEED
-
- 5/90 1400 14000 500 22 9 10 0.584
- 5/90 1400 14000 500 22 12 12 0.576
- 5/90 1400 14000 500 22 3 3 0.591
- 5/90 1420 14200 500 22 12 12 0.591
- 5/90 1420 14200 500 22 6 6 0.600
- 5/90 1430 14300 500 22 9 10 0.600
- 5/90 1430 14300 500 22 15 15 0.591
- 5/90 1430 14300 500 22 12 12 0.590
- 5/90 1432 14320 716 22 13 16 0.591
- 5/90 1434 14340 717 22 33 147 0.483
- 5/90 1436 14360 718 22 25 122 0.500
- 5/90 1436 14360 718 22 25 109 0.512
- 5/90 1436 14360 718 22 28 153 0.476
- 5/90 1438 14380 719 22 6 109 0.533
-
- 5/80 1432 14320 716 22 56 68 0.673
- 5/80 1432 14320 716 22 14 14 0.666
- 5/80 1432 14320 716 22 15 16 0.661
- 5/60 1432 14320 716 22 19 22 0.856
- 5/60 1432 14320 716 22 84 95 0.699
- 5/60 1432 14320 716 22 18 21 0.871
- 5/60 1432 14320 716 30 38 40 0.837
- 5/60 1432 14320 716 30 25 26 0.869
- 5/55 1432 14320 716 22 13 13 0.935
- 5/55 1432 14320 716 22 25 25 0.926
- 5/55 1432 14320 716 22 25 25 0.926
- 5/55 1432 14320 716 22 20 20 0.932
- 5/55 1432 14320 716 22 17 19 0.934
- 5/55 1432 14320 716 22 13 14 0.942
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- M. Lambert [Page 16]
-
-