TECHNIQUES FOR LAN PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS IN A REAL-TIME ENVIRONMENT

The Navy is a large user of real-time systems. A modern surface ship i s deployed with hundreds of computers which are required for the ship to perform its mission. The Navy is moving away from using ''niche'' m arket components to meet its real-time computing needs and towards dis tributed processing using Commercial-Off-The-Shelf(COTS) computing com ponents. The use of commercial real-time computing components requires careful evaluation to determine if they can meet the real-time requir ements. This paper focuses on evaluating the communication resources f or use aboard a Navy ship. Presented are: (1) Key performance metrics for assessing the communication capabilities of computers for use aboa rd Navy ships; (2) An assessment of existing methods for determining t hese metrics; (3) A methodology for collecting data to evaluate a part icular component's performance related to these; (4) Examples of apply ing the methodology; and (5) Examples of quantitative analysis using t he metrics.