A multilevel modeling and analysis of network-centric systems

The design, analysis and development of parallel and distributed applicatio ns on high performance Network-Centric Systems (NCS) are still very challen ging tasks. Consequently, there is a great need for an integrated multileve l analysis methodology to assist in designing and analyzing the performance of both existing and proposed new network-centric systems. Currently, ther e are no comprehensive analysis methods that address such diverse needs. Th is paper presents a three-level hierarchical modeling approach for analyzin g the end-to-end performance of an NCS application. The overall system is p artitioned into application level, protocol level and network level. Functi ons at each level are modeled using queueing networks. This approach enable s the designer to study system performance for different types of networks and protocols and different design strategies. In this paper we use video-o n-demand as an application example to show how our approach can be used to analyze the performance of such an application. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B .V. All rights reserved.