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PUBLICATIONS

A Stall Metric to Track Communication Performance

Published

Author(s)

Alan Mink, Wayne J. Salamon, Michael D. Indovina

Abstract

Probing the communication protocol stack in Linux PC-based clusters to investigate erratic TCP/IP performance has led to a new metric, data stream stall, which is analogous to instruction stream stall in CPUs. Data stream stalling correlates well with unexpected throughput performance dips; the dips are usually due to delayed ACKs or questionable handling of them. We illustrate use of this data stall metric by isolating and correcting the cause of these communication throughput dips in our version of Linux (2.0.29). The availability of this data stream stall metric would be useful feedback to users by indicating deficient communications performance.
Citation
Symposium on Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing
Pub Type
Journals

Keywords

ATM, communication protocols, fast ethernet, linux, performance measurement, TCP/IP

Citation

Mink, A. , Salamon, W. and Indovina, M. (2000), A Stall Metric to Track Communication Performance, Symposium on Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing (Accessed April 19, 2025)

Issues

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Created February 15, 2000, Updated February 17, 2017