TOE-Em: The TCP Offload Engine Emulator for Approximating the Impact of Removing TCP/IP Protocol Processing From Apache HTTP Server

Abstract

This article focuses on an emulator used for validating a model for TCP offload. The TCP Offload Engine Emulator (TOE-Em) is a full TCP offload program that emulates the behavior of a TOE device using front-end, another PC in this case. Its purpose is to study the impact of full offload in a real scenario. We tested Apache 2.2 with and without the support of the emulator by requesting different file sets. The CPU utilization and the delay of the system was measured and analyzed. In our experimental setup, full TCP offload was beneficial for files greater than 10 KB.