Embedded Design Handbook

ID 683689
Date 8/28/2023
Public
Document Table of Contents

7.4.2.2. Relationships Between Networking System Elements

The total throughput performance of an embedded networking system is highly dependent on the interaction of the user application, networking stack, Ethernet device (and driver), as well as the physical connection for the networking link. Making substantial performance improvements in the network throughput often depends on optimizing the performance of all these elements simultaneously.

In general, your networking application has some criteria for performance that are either achieved or not. However, a good first order approximation for determining the viability of your networking application is to remove the user application from the system and measure the total networking performance. This method provides you with an upper bound for total network performance, which you can use to create your networking application. This section uses a simple benchmark program that determines the raw throughput rate of TCP and UDP data transactions. This benchmark application does very little apart from sending or receiving data through the networking stack. It therefore provides us with a good approximation of the maximum networking performance achievable.