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Windows Server 2003 Scalable Networking |
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Wednesday, 24 May 2006
by Michel Roth
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The Scalable Networking Pack — which is the first deliverable of Microsoft’s Scalable Networking Initiative — focuses on eliminating the operating-system bottlenecks related to the processing of network traffic loads. As network speeds increase to multi-gigabit and beyond, more CPU cycles will be needed to drive network devices at the speeds that are available to them. This has the potential to limit server scalability, such as the number of users that each server can support. The innovations and architectural enhancements in our new Scalable Networking Pack allow customers to, in effect, turbo charge their Windows Server systems and achieve higher server performance. This is accomplished by offloading potentially CPU-intensive packet processing to specialized network adapters, which then frees up the host’s CPU to perform more application-related tasks, such as supporting a larger number of users or responding to network inquiries more quickly.
Depending on the type of workload that’s running, you could see a reduction in the CPU overhead related to network packet processing ranging from 20 to 100 percent. At the same time, because of innovations like Receive-side Scaling, which enables better utilization of multi-processor server investments, you could also experience as much as a 40 percent increase in network throughput.
Read more here.
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