An Experiment in Parallel Computing over a Heterogeneous ATM-Based MAN

The advent of high-speed local and wide area networks has made geographically distributed NOWs an appealing platform for supercomputing applications. In particular, ATM is an emerging standard that seems to meet the communication requirements of such applications. This paper presents the results of performance tests of a real-world parallel program over a heterogeneous ATM-based public metropolitan area network, and compares them to those obtained on a traditional Ethernet LAN platform. The study demonstrates that the ATM MAN exhibits performance similar to that of the Ethernet LAN. Communicationcosts of the ATM interconnection can be well characterized, and overall application performance accurately predicted. Furthermore, the study shows how performance has been improved by introducing a static load balancing strategy to better exploit resources available on the network.