Network performance evaluation of latest windows operating systems

In this paper network performance evaluation of three latest versions of Windows OSs; namely Windows XP®, Windows Vista™ and Windows 7™ is conducted. Network performance measurements were obtained with D-ITG (Distributed Internet Traffic Generator) on a two identical computer systems connected with 1 Gbps Ethernet crossover cable. Following metrics were measured with OWD (One-Way-Delay) and RTT (Round-Trip-Time) meters: delay, jitter, throughput and CPU usage. With OWD meter performance of TCP protocol was measured when generating DNS-like traffic. Performance of UDP protocol was measured when generating two gamming traffic patterns and one VoIP call. With RTT meter performance of TCP and UDP protocols was measured for different packet sizes and exponential distribution of inter-departure time. Both TCP and UDP were running over the IPv4 and IPv6, respectively. The results show that network traffic with smaller packet sizes would benefit from Windows Vista and Windows 7. However, network traffic with bigger packet sizes still has the best performance in Windows XP.