Accelerated Ring Experimental Release 4.3

July 2, 2013

The Spread Toolkit Accelerated Ring Experimental release 4.3 is a research version of the Spread toolkit based on the Spread Toolkit 4.3 public release. This version was developed by Amy Babay at the Distributed Systems and Networks Lab at Johns Hopkins University.

The Spread Toolkit Accelerated Ring Experimental release 4.3 can be downloded from http://www.spread.org/download/research-spread-src-4.3.0.tar.gz.

This experimental release features an experimental protocol tailored for data center networks that can provide 30%-50% higher throughput and 20%-35% lower latency in modern local area networks. Of course, the version also supports the original Ring protocol.

The new features of this experimental release are:

1) Accelerated Ring protocol to improve both throughput and latency in local area networks.

2) Redesigned message-packing, reducing overhead for small messages.

To use the experimental protocol, the AcceleratedRing parameter must be set to "true" in the spread.conf file, and an AcceleratedWindow with a value between 0 and the value of the PersonalWindow parameter should be specified as a flow control parameter in the spread.conf file. The sample.spread.conf file included in this experimental release has appropriate settings for these parameters that enable the Accelerated Ring protocol, as well as a description of their functions.