Author: Neftaly Malatjie

Many systems can be characterized as dominated either by throughput limitations or by latency limitations in terms of end-user utility or experience. In some cases, hard limits such as the speed of light present unique problems to such systems and nothing can be done to correct this. Other systems allow for significant balancing and optimization for best user experience.

The following measures are often considered important:

• Bandwidth commonly measured in bits/second is the maximum rate that information can be transferred
• Throughput is the actual rate that information is transferred
• Latency the delay between the sender and the receiver decoding it, this is mainly a function of the signals travel time, and processing time at any nodes the information traverses
• Jitter variation in packet delay at the receiver of the information
• Error rate the number of corrupted bits expressed as a percentage or fraction of the total sent

The installation of LAN must be conducted in a manner that the LAN system software and application software;

• Operates according to manufacturer’s and installation specifications.
• Is configured and customised according to installation specification.
• Performs according to manufacturer’s and installation specification.

To the above end, the performance of the LAN system software must be checked during and after the installation inorder to check if it is in line with the manufacturer’s specifications.

Network performance refers to measures of service quality of a network as seen by the customer. There are many different ways to measure the performance of a network, as each network is different in nature and design. Performance can also be modeled and simulated instead of measured; one example of this is using state transition diagrams to model queuing performance or to use a Network Simulator

LAN Manager is a network operating system by Microsoft that works as a server application. It runs under Microsoft OS/2, and was developed in conjunction with 3Com. The file server may concurrently be used for other tasks like database services. In other words, the system provides a good multi-tasking function. It also supports most desktop operating systems like DOS, Windows and OS/2 clients. Currently, the LAN Manager feature has been superseded by Microsoft Windows NT Server and most parts of the LAN Manager are being used in the Windows NT and Windows 2000.

This network operating system is a protocol suite designed based on the XNS protocol architecture. It provides comprehensive support to most of the desktop operating systems in the market, including DOS, Windows, Macintosh, OS/2 and UNIX. Novell also supports the local area networks and asynchronous wide area communications.