Comparative packet-forwarding measurement of three popular operating systems

This papers measures and compares the network performance (with respect to packet forwarding) of three popular operating systems when used in today's Gigabit Ethernet networks. Specifically, the paper compares the performance in terms of packet forwarding of Linux, Windows Server and Windows XP. We measure both kernel- and user-level packet forwarding when subjecting hosts to different traffic load conditions. The performance is compared and analyzed in terms of throughput, packet loss, delay, and CPU availability. Our evaluation methodology is based on packet-forwarding measurement which is a standard and popular benchmark and evaluation methodology to assess the performance of network elements such as servers, gateways, routers, and switches. Our evaluation methodology considers different configuration setups and utilizes open-source software tools to generate relatively high traffic rates. We consider today's typical network hosts of modern processors and Gigabit network cards. Our measurements show that in general Linux exhibits superior overall performance in the case of kernel (or IP) packet forwarding, whereas Windows Server exhibits superior performance in the case of user-level packet forwarding.

[1]  H. Saleem,et al.  Performance comparison of packet transmission over IPv6 network on different platforms , 2006 .

[2]  G. Prytz,et al.  Real-time performance measurements using UDP on Windows and Linux , 2005, 2005 IEEE Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation.

[3]  Sebastian Zander,et al.  KUTE A high performance Kernel-based UDP traffic engine , 2005 .

[4]  Scott O. Bradner,et al.  Benchmarking Methodology for Network Interconnect Devices , 1999, RFC.

[5]  Daniel Pierre Bovet,et al.  Understanding the Linux Kernel , 2000 .

[6]  Lorenzo Muttoni,et al.  Performance evaluation of a Windows NT based PC cluster for high performance computing , 2004, J. Syst. Archit..

[7]  Khaled Salah,et al.  Evaluating system performance in Gigabit networks , 2003, 28th Annual IEEE International Conference on Local Computer Networks, 2003. LCN '03. Proceedings..

[8]  Eric Jul,et al.  A scheduling scheme for network saturated NT multiprocessors , 1997 .

[9]  Jamal Hadi Salim,et al.  Beyond Softnet , 2001, Annual Linux Showcase & Conference.

[10]  Sherali Zeadally,et al.  Network application programming interfaces (APIs) performance on commodity operating systems , 2004, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[11]  Sandro Zappatore,et al.  Distributed Cooperative Laboratories: Networking, Instrumentation, and Measurements , 2006 .

[12]  Khaled Salah,et al.  Implementation and experimental performance evaluation of a hybrid interrupt-handling scheme , 2009, Comput. Commun..

[13]  Dror G. Feitelson,et al.  Comparing Windows NT, Linux, and QNX as the basis for cluster systems , 2001, Concurr. Comput. Pract. Exp..

[14]  Sherali Zeadally,et al.  Comparison of end-system IPv6 protocol stacks , 2004 .

[15]  Kenji Takeda,et al.  Comparative performance of a commodity Alpha cluster running Linux and Windows NT , 1999, ICWC 99. IEEE Computer Society International Workshop on Cluster Computing.

[16]  Sally Floyd,et al.  Wide area traffic: the failure of Poisson modeling , 1995, TNET.

[17]  K. K. Ramakrishnan,et al.  Performance Considerations in Designing Network Interfaces , 1993, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..

[18]  Timothy S. Newman,et al.  Performance Comparison , 2021, Satellite Formation Flying.

[19]  EDDIE KOHLER,et al.  The click modular router , 2000, TOCS.