Analysis of TCP/IP protocol stack for a hybrid TCP/IP offload engine

Abstract

TCP/IP, the most popular communication protocol, is processed on a host CPU in traditional computer systems and this imposes heavy loads on the host CPU. Recently TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) technology, which processes TCP/IP on a network adapter instead of the host CPU, has become an important alternative approach to this problem. In this paper, we analyze TCP/IP components that impose high loads on the host CPU by measuring processing times for each function in a TCP/IP protocol stack. Based on these analyses, we propose a hybrid TOE architecture, in which functions imposing high loads on the host CPU are implemented using hardware, and other functions are implemented using software.