| Summary: | In the past it has been convenient to adopt existing long haul network (LHN) protocols for use in local area networks (LANs). However, due to the different operating parameters that exist between these two types of networks, it is not possible for a LHN protocol to fully exploit the characteristics of a LAN. Thus, the need arises for a protocol designed specifically for use in a LAN environment.
LNTP is one such transport level protocol. It was designed for exclusive use in LANs, and thus does not incorporate those features which are not relevant to a LAN environment. The result of this is a simpler and more efficient protocol. As well, LNTP employs a novel deferred flow control strategy which minimizes the time that a transmitting process will be blocked.
This thesis examines the implementation of LNTP in the 4.2 BSD UNIX operating system. Various measurements are taken, and LNTP's performance is compared to that of TCP/IP, a LHN protocol which is often used in LAN environments. Several formulas are developed to determine the optimum values for various LNTP parameters, and these theoretical results are compared to the experimentally observed values.
We conclude that LNTP does indeed outperform TCP/IP. However, due to the overhead of the non-LNTP specific protocol layers, this improvement is not as great as it might be. Nonetheless, LNTP proves itself to be a viable replacement for TCP/IP. === Science, Faculty of === Computer Science, Department of === Graduate
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