Abstract

Modern TCP implementations are capable of very high point-to-point bandwidths. Delivered performance on the fastest networks is often limited by the sending and receiving hosts, rather than by the network hardware or the TCP protocol implementation itself. In this case, systems can achieve higher bandwidth by reducing host overheads through a variety of optimizations above and below the TCP protocol stack, given support from the network interface. This paper surveys the most important of these optimizations, and illustrates their effects quantitatively with empirical results from a an experimental network delivering up to two gigabits per second of point-to-point TCP bandwidth. 1 Introduction Good TCP/IP protocol implementations are capable of transferring data at a high percentage of available network link bandwidth, reflecting the success of many years of refinements to TCP/IP protocol handling software and policies. On the fastest networks, applicationto -application throughput is...

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