Using JavaNws to compare C and Java TCP‐Socket performance

Abstract

As research and implementation continue to facilitate high-performance computing in Java, applications can benefit from resource management and prediction tools. In this work, we present such a tool for network round-trip time and bandwidth between a user's desktop and any machine running a Web server (this assumes that the user's browser is capable of supporting Java 1.1 and above). JavaNws is a Java implementation and extension of a powerful subset of the Network Weather Service (NWS), a performance prediction toolkit that dynamically characterizes and forecasts the performance available to an application. However, due to the Java language implementation and functionality (portability, security, etc.), it is unclear whether a Java program is able to measure and predict the network performance experienced by C-applications with the same accuracy as an equivalent C program. We provide a quantitative equivalence study of the Java and C TCP-socket interface and show that the data collected by the JavaNws is as predictable as that collected by the NWS (using C). Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.