Title :
An analysis of TCP processing overhead
Author :
Clark, David D. ; Romkey, John ; Salwen, Howard
Author_Institution :
MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract :
The authors report a preliminary analysis of the processing overhead of the transport protocol TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) in which they estimate the possible performance range of the protocol. The analysis was performed by compiling a version of TCP and counting the number of the instructions in the common path. The analysis suggests that fewer than 200 instructions are required to process a TCP packet in the normal case. This number is small enough to support very high-speed transmission if it were the major overhead. The authors offer some speculations about the actual source of processing overhead in network protocols
Keywords :
protocols; TCP processing overhead; Transmission Control Protocol; instructions; network protocols; transport protocol; Costs; Local area networks; Performance analysis; Production; Routing protocols; Switches; TCPIP; Testing; Throughput; Transport protocols;
Conference_Titel :
Local Computer Networks, 1988., Proceedings of the 13th Conference on
Conference_Location :
Minneapolis, MN
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-0891-9
DOI :
10.1109/LCN.1988.10239
