Performance evaluation of communication networks for distributed computing

We present performance results for several high-speed networks in distributed computing environments. These networks are: HiPPI, ATM, Fibre Channel, IBM Allnode switch, FDDI, and Ethernet. These networks are parts of two testbeds: DaVinci-a cluster of 16 SGI R8000 workstations at NASA Ames-and LACE-a cluster of 96 IBM RS6000 workstations at NASA Lewis. Also, an IBM SP2 machine is considered for comparison. Several communication tests are performed and the results are presented for two programming levels: BSD socket programming interface using the program ttcp and PVM message passing library. These results show that the emerging network technologies can achieve reasonable performance under certain conditions. However, the achievable performance is still far behind the theoretical peak rates.