Demultiplexing on the Adapter, Experiments with Internet Protocols over ATM (Extended Abstract)

) Ernst W. Biersack, Erich Rutsche, Thomas Unterschutz Institut EURECOM B.P 193 06904 Sophia Antipolis, Cedex FRANCE e-mail: erbi@eurecom.fr October 14, 1 Introduction Processing of protocols has been perceived as a major bottleneck in the communication performance. To get around this bottleneck various approaches have been examined. The offloading of entire protocols or protocol functions onto adapters or communication subsystems was not successful because the I/O interface of the workstations limited the performance gained by the subsystem. Experiments with newer, so called light-weight protocols showed that improved protocols could add functionality but their performance did not give sufficient evidence to replace traditional protocols such as TCP/IP. However, in the implementation of protocols still a considerable gain can be achieved by better interfaces to the network adapters [DALT 93] and by better integration of the protocol stack and its application. We investigate user l..