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We describe an approach to the analysis of the performance of distributed applications in high-speed wide area networks. The approach is designed to identify all of the issues that impact performance, and isolate the causes due to the related hardware and software components. We also describe the use of a distributed parallel data server as a network load generator that can be used in conjunction with this approach to probe various aspects of high-speed distributed systems from top to bottom of the protocol stack and from end to end in the network. To demonstrate the utility of this approach we present the analysis of a TCP-over-ATM problem that was uncovered while developing this methodology. This work was done in conjunction with the ARPA-funded MAGIC gigabit testbed.
Tierney et al. (1996) studied this question.