Did you hear the one about the station wagon full of disk drives going down the Interstate?

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Teaser Description

  • There may be one problem that asks you to investigate and compare the performance (e.g. bandwidth and latency) of various networks fabrics, such as gigabit Ethernet and Infiniband.

Description

  • A boatload of data needs to be moved from one cluster node to another cluster node. Your task is to use NetPIPE to determine:
    • The optimum packet size to use if the underlying transport is TCP over Ethernet
    • The optimum packet size to use if the underlying transport is TCP over Infiniband.
    • How much lower the latency of TCP over Infiniband is than that of TCP over Ethernet.
  • Bonus points for producing a graph, in PNG format, that illustrates your answers to the first two questions. gnuplot is likely to be your best friend here.

Technology

  • Required tools:
    • NetPIPE
    • Knowledge of TCP, Ethernet, and Infiniband
  • Suggested tools:
    • gnuplot for graphing the results

Grading

  • In a folder named "StationWagon" on your team's USB drive:
    • One plain text file with your answers to the three questions.
    • If you produce a graph as part of your answer to the first two questions place it in that folder as well.
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