A user-oriented test suite for transport protocols comparison in datagrid context

Standard TCP faces performance limitations in very high speed wide area networks. This is mainly due to the long end-to-end feedback loop and the conservative behaviour with respect to congestion. Many alternatives to TCP have been proposed to overcome these limitations. However, from a user perspective it is difficult to compare them quantitatively. The goal of this paper is to present a user-oriented test suite, called HSTTS, for helping users to select transport services adapted to their specific environment and traffic conditions. We detail the principles and the architecture of the tool and illustrate our proposal by experiments and results obtained on the Grid'5000 experimental facility.