Revised AIX/370 TCP/IP performance benchmarks and driver

[Brian Eliot]

A report first made available in April detailing the TCP/IP
performance of AIX/370 using a variety of LAN interfaces has been
revised to include performance data for the Bus-Tech, Inc. ELC2
Ethernet interface and AIX/370-to-RS/6000 FTP throughput.
 
A revised AIX/370 device driver that supports the BTI ELC2 native
emulation using data streaming channel protocols is also available.
 
Both the report and the device driver may be obtained via anonymous
FTP to aix.rpi.edu (128.113.26.20) in the following files:
 
  pub/bti.README        instructions for configuring and installing
                        a Bus-Tech ELC or ELC2 interface under VM
                        and AIX/370
 
  pub/bti0.3.tar.Z      compressed tar distribution for BTI ELC/ELC2
                        native mode device driver Version 0.3 for
                        AIX/370
 
  pub/aixtcpbench.ps    AIX/370 performance benchmark report in
                        Postscript format
 
  pub/aixtcpbench.1403  AIX/370 performance benchmark report in
                        1403 line printer format
 
  pub/aixtcptable.1403  AIX/370 performance benchmark raw results
                        tabular summary in 1403 line printer format
 
The most significant result of the benchmark is that the BTI ELC2
achieves FTP throughputs exceeding one megabyte per second using
the native and 8232 emulations and a channel data streaming rate
of 4.5 megabytes per second.  This represents an improvement of
over 50% compared to the original BTI ELC.  The ELC2 with data
streaming at 3.0 megabytes per second performs at just under the
one megabyte per second FTP throughput level.
 
The revised Version 0.3 device driver is required to support the
ELC2 with data streaming, but continues to support the original
ELC.  It also contains improvements to reduce CPU time consumption
at high packet rates.