SPIMS: a tool for protocol implementation performance measurements

The authors present SPIMS, a tool which provides an environment where it is easy to develop, specify, and execute communication measurements that can be used for 'benchmarking'. The tool measures user-oriented performance parameters, such as throughput and response time, without relying on special hardware or operating system support. The measurements are specified in a protocol-independent specification language, which is presented in some detail. The usefulness of the tool is demonstrated by measurements on the ISODE OSI (FTAM) stack and the Arpa (FTP/TCP) protocols on Sun, MicroVAX, Apollo, IBM PC/RT and DS90 machines running Unix.<
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