How NOT to Test SNA Performance!

Many SNA and 3270 performance evaluation studies and articles have used the IBM host based file transfer program (IND$FILE) as the method of obtaining performance results. This is a very suspect method for the following reasons:

3270 traffic is interactive bi-directional traffic with varying frame sizes, and IND$FILE is not.
IND$FILE is designed to transfer files and not measure and evaluate network performance
IND$FILE is more of a benchmark of the disk performance of the sender and receiver than the network components

Q. Why is IND$FILE used as the method for performance measurements

A. If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem is a nail.

i.e. the people and organizations conducting the tests just don't have the proper tools available to them.

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Last Updated: Aug. 10, 2000 http://www.acomtech.com/notsna.html