Performance of TCP over Wide Area High Speed Networks

Brian Tierney
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
bltierney@lbl.gov

Abstract

We have been experimenting with TCP over a routed wide area OC-12
network. We have OC-12 interfaces hosts at Lawrence Berkeley National
Lab (LBNL) in Berkeley, CA, and at Argonne National Lab (ANL) near
Chicago, IL. These hosts were connected by an OC-12 ATM network path,
which included going through 2 Cisco GSR routers and several ATM
switches. We will present the results of this testing, which includes
testing the new TCP selective acknowledgements option for Solaris. Our
results show that we can achieve up to 480 Mbits/sec of sustained
end-to-end throughput over this network under ideal circumstances, but
that a number of factors may reduce this number considerably.