Client-server performance on flow-controlled ATM networks: a Web database of simulation results

Extensive simulation has demonstrated the effectiveness of credit-based ATM flow control in supporting client-server applications. In particular, request/response protocols used in these applications allow efficient sharing of switch buffer, for the case when all the VCs sharing the same buffer are subject to the same degree of downstream congestion. The required buffer size can be as small as the minimum of bandwidth/sup */RTT for the link and Clients/sup */Reply-Size. Request/response protocols generally tolerate congestion better than greedy loads. Being able to avoid synchronization, FIFO scheduling is sometimes more efficient than VC round-robin scheduling. These findings are derived from an online Web database of simulation results covering more than 10,000 network and load configurations. The Web database approach has proven to be effective in managing and navigating a large set of simulation results.