Simulation and evaluation of FTP and TCP/IP on FDDI backbone network

Presents an evaluation of the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) under various traffic conditions by simulating file transfer between two Ethernet stations connected via an FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) backbone. The model is built using a simulation language called Research Queueing Package. The results presented indicate that TCP works slower for smaller files, partly because of the chosen parameter values (e.g. buffer sizes, the initial window size, the initial timeout value) and partly because of the long wait for the retransmission timeout to expire. The simulation results and data from a real FTP (file transfer protocol) show that TCP/IP is sensitive to different parameter values, especially the timeout values. It is also found that TCP introduces a significant overhead. Therefore, it is concluded that TCP is not very efficient for strictly local area networks, and that a more efficient protocol for this purpose must be developed