Enabling gigabit network access to end users

The increasing demand for high-performance voice, video, image, and data communication networks has challenged researchers to design innovative network architectures capable of delivering high-speed data transfers to end users. To achieve this objective, considerable efforts have been invested in minimizing or eliminating bottlenecks that exist in high-speed network environments. These bottlenecks exist primarily at two levels, namely, network data transmission to the end system and data delivery within the end system to the user. For wired networks, improvements in fiber optic technologies have shifted the bottleneck from the underlying physical network to the end system. However, for wireless networks, we still face obstacles at both levels to achieve high, end-to-end performance data delivery, particularly at gigabit per second rates. In this paper, we first present current wireless communication technologies aimed at delivering gigabit per second transmission rates to end systems. We then investigate the bottleneck at the end system by exploring experimentally the performance benefits of a network interface architecture designed for enabling high-performance, low-latency applications using minimal host resources. We compare the performance of the network interface architecture with the traditional network interface architecture, using commodity PCs connected by gigabit per second local area networks running protocols such as TCP/IP and UDP/IP. We argue that such a network interface architecture will eliminate the bottlenecks prevalent in current end systems and, consequently, enables users to reap the full benefits of high-speed networks available today.