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Access Type

Open Access

Document Type

thesis

Degree Program

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Degree Type

Master of Science (M.S.)

Year Degree Awarded

January 2007

Month Degree Awarded

September

Keywords

network processors, web servers, offloading, performance analysis

Abstract

Offloading tasks to a network processor is one of the important ways to increase server performance. Hardware offloading of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) intensive tasks is known to significantly improve performance. When the entire application is considered for offloading, the impact on the server can be significant because it significantly reduces the load on the server. The goal of this thesis is to consider such a system with application-level offloading, rather than hardware offloading, and gauge its performance benefits.

I am implementing this project on an Apache httpd server (running RedHat Linux), on a system that utilizes a co-located network processor system (IXP2855). The performance of the two implementations is measured using the SPECweb2005 benchmark, which is the accepted industry standard for evaluating Web server performance.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/349895

First Advisor

Tilman Wolf

COinS