Low-Latency Communication over Fast Ethernet

Fast Ethernet (100Base-TX) can provide a low-cost alternative to more esoteric network technologies for high-performance cluster computing. We use a network architecture based on the U-Net approach to implement low-latency and high-bandwidth communication over Fast Ethernet, with performance rivaling (and in some cases exceeding) that of 155 Mbps ATM. U-Net provides protected, user-level access to the network interface and enables application-level round-trip latencies of less than 60μs over Fast Ethernet.