Performance analysis of parallel processing in local area network

Parallel computers can take many different architectural forms. One cost effective and convenient means to acquire parallel processing is via a network of computers. Today's high-speed Local Area Network (LAN) interconnecting islands of general-purpose workstations results in vast computational power potentially available on the network. The utilisation of these networked workstations as an inexpensive parallel processing platform is realistic. There is a need to understand the behaviour of parallel processing in a LAN environment especially its performance under different LAN traffic patterns. Of particular interest are how different frame sizes interpacket spacing times and network utilisation impact the performance of LAN-based parallel processing. This paper attempts to discuss all the above issues and presents the results obtained under different simulated network traffic patterns.