Studying the In uence of the InniBand Packet Size to Guarantee QoS

In niBand (IBA) has been proposed as an industry-standard architecture both for I/O server and interpro-cessor communication. IBA employs a switched point-to-point network, instead of using a shared bus. IBA is being developed by the InniBandSM Trade Association to provide present and future server systems with the required levels of reliability, availability, performance, scalability, and quality of service (QoS). In previous papers we have proposed an eective strategy for conguring the IBA networks to provide users with the required levels of QoS. This strategy is based on the proper conguration of the mechanisms IBA carries to support QoS. Specically, our method-ology congures the InniBand Arbitration Tables and uses the dierent Service Levels and Virtual Lanes that are available, in order to segregate the dierent trac ows. Thus, each ow receives the treatment it has pre-viously requested. Moreover, by using our methodology, applications can be assured that their requirements will be satised. In this paper, we review the basis of our methodology and we study the in uence of the packet size on the QoS guaranteed to the applications. 1