A closer look at Noahnet

ABSTRACT

Noahnet is a robust, highly available, high bandwidth local area network (LAN) architecture, in the implementation phase at the University of Delaware. Noahnet uses a distributed switch-oriented node topology, a flooding approach for message routing, and high bandwidth communication media. The purpose of this paper is to consider some of the important issues in detail such as: the various ways flood control can be implemented; their relative advantages/disadvantages; the functions of a node; and one possible implementation of a node in Noahnet. Expected performance of the Noahnet in comparison to Ethernet and token ring networks is also discussed. Though Noahnet uses more complex structure and protocol, we demonstrate that the overhead of using flooding in Noahnet is minimal and that a Noahnet node implementation is very simple and inexpensive. The paper concludes that Noahnet provides features such as robustness, high availability, high throughput, and high communication band width at almost no additional cost.

INDEX TERMS

Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.1 PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS

General Terms:
Design, Economics, Experimentation, Measurement, Performance, Standardization