BTU: A Host Communication Benchmark
Computer
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Our benchmark does not test the maximum performance of a workstation in a homogeneous network under ideal circumstances. Rather, we take a vendor supplied workstation running UNIX\footnote{TM of USL, Inc.} operating system, install our benchmark program and connect the workstation to a blackboxtestbed which emulates a LAN connected to a WAN. The benchmark run will submit the workstation to a carefully designed combination of tests. The result is an indicator of what the user, at the application level, can expect in terms of bits sent to or received from a remote host. Our benchmark, in contrast to maximum performance tests, takes into account concurrent activities, such as CPU and I/O activities, which compete for resources on the test machine and concurrent activities on the network which will interfere with the test machine''s communication. On the one hand we intend these results for the workstation buyer who can use the data together with the configuration specification and the list price to make a well reasoned decision if the workstation meets the needs when compared to the results of other workstations. We also believe these results can provide insights to the architects as to the location and nature of the communication bottlenecks of a particular workstation. We present the results of applying the BTU benchmark to four workstations from different vendors which shows that neither price nor SPECmarks are a good predictor for communication performance as measured by BTUs. We conclude this paper with a discussion of our plans for having the community accept this proposal as a communication benchmark.