Section 7.3. Network Utilization

7.3. Network Utilization

The following points help describe the effects of network utilization.

• Network events, like disk events, are slow. They are often measured in milliseconds. A client application that is heavily network bound will experience delays. Network server applications often obviate these delays by being multithreaded or multiprocess.

• A network card that is at 100% utilization will most likely degrade application performance. However there are times where we expect 100% utilization, such as in bulk network transfers.

• Dividing the current Kbytes/sec by the speed of the network card can provide a useful measure of network utilization.

• Using only Kbytes/sec in a utilization calculation fails to account for per-packet overheads.

• Unexpectedly high utilizations may be caused when auto-negotiation has failed by choosing a much slower speed.