Bennett, John K.2009-06-042009-06-042000Dobric, Damian. "Implementing multicast in a software emulation of the virtual interface architecture." (2000) Master’s Thesis, Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/17333">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/17333</a>.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/17333The Virtual Interface Architecture (VIA) is an emerging standard for low-latency, high-bandwidth, user-level communication designed to achieve high performance by minimizing data copying and kernel/user transitions. Currently very few network controllers provide VIA support, and the current specification for VIA does not include multicast, a useful mechanism for distributed applications. This thesis tests two ideas by experiment. Whether a software implementation of VIA can provide useful performance enhancement, and whether multicast support can be incorporated into VIA with tangible benefit. I designed a Windows NT driver software implementation of VIA for Gigabit Ethernet that achieved an average of 57% lower latency than Ethernet (UDP) for messages of one to 64K bytes. These low-level benefits translated to a reduction in execution time of 10--14% over UDP for several distributed applications, and with multicast, an additional reduction of 1% to 15%. We conclude that multicast support would be a useful extension to the VIA specification that could be added without difficulty.125 p.application/pdfengCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.ElectronicsElectrical engineeringComputer scienceThesisTHESIS E.E. 2000 DOBRIC