Performance of distributed systems based on Ethernet and personal computers

In recent years, many real-time applications have emerged on the Internet. Among other types of networks, the Internet also contains a large number of local area networks (LANs) that are based on personal computers and Ethernet. Real-time systems designed for the Internet must consider the impact of this technology. The designers of these systems have a number of computer and network configuration options available and are faced with the problem of choosing the appropriate one. Since it is difficult to find performance results that cover real-time requirements for Ethernet-based personal computer systems, we have developed simple measurement software to obtain performance data. We present the measurements obtained and discuss how the data transmission speed is affected by different components of a distributed system. We show that if the appropriate components are chosen, it is possible to build a distributed system, based on Ethernet and personal computers, that has a high data transmission speed and that can efficiently use Ethernet bandwidth.