Performance Evaluation of Copper-Based Gigabit Ethernet Interfaces

In today’s high-performance computational environments communication substrates often stand out as the major limiting factor to performance, accessibility, and stability. Such platforms are naturally well-suited for highperformance network foundation built upon Gigabit Ethernet, or “GigE” technologies. Gigabit Ethernet hardware continues to become more attractive in price and availability, making it a viable choice for situations where large bandwidth is demanded. And copper-based Gigabit Ethernet holds additional advantages when considering the additional cost associated with rewiring for fiber technologies. This report characterizes the current capabilities of copperbased gigabit solutions and identifies requisite components for optimal performance. These aspects are compared under various Linux and Windows 2000 configurations as they relate to latency, throughput, and stability for a variety of hardware configurations.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2002
• Where: LCN
• Authors: Paul Gray, Anthony Betz
• Keywords: Computer Networks, Copper-based Gigabit Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet Hardware, LCN 2002