Performance and software evaluation of the modular TIP communication system

A modular architecture for communication systems is an attractive alternative to the well-known layering philosophy: instead of having a strict hierarchy of protocol layers, a modular communication system encompasses a collection of generic protocol functions which can be configured in an application-dependent way. The assumed benefits are simplification by removing redundant functionality and increased performance by composing only those functions that are required for the requested service. This paper presents performance measurements taken from the transport and internetworking package (TIP), which is a communication system based on a modular and object-oriented architecture. In particular, our measurements show the performance impact of modularization and configuration, and provide a rough estimate of how modular communication systems (i.e. TIP) perform as compared with monolithic communication systems (i.e. TCP/IP). In addition, we evaluate whether a modular software design reduces the costs for protocol implementation