Evaluating STREAMS-based protocol stacks over high-performance networks

STREAMS-based protocol stack have become integral components of many desktop operating systems. STREAMS allows the use of different communication application programming interfaces (APIs) with dynamically configurable protocol stacks. The article compares these APIs and protocol stacks using connectionless datagrams over Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet networks. In recent years, STREAMS implementations have evolved to overcome the limitations of predecessors in order to provide better performance with emerging high-speed networking technologies. Our performance analyses demonstrate the maximum performance that can be delivered to end user applications using two of the most recent STREAMS implementations. In addition, our experimental results demonstrate the suitability of STREAMS as a promising framework for supporting applications running over high-speed networks. We hope that our experiences will give network designers and developers useful insights into STREAMS performance capabilities for supporting fast networks emerging on the market today.