Breaking News -
Networking:
Comtrol Achieves Breakthrough In
Network Communications
Comtrol Corporation, a leading U.S. provider of multiport
serial-to-Ethernet
device connectivity and management products, announced today that it has
achieved a performance breakthrough that will enable expanded use of low-cost,
highly reliable network serial port servers, enabling them to connect remotely
located serial devices to the application software programs with which they
interoperate. Delays in communicating across the network (latency) had
previously been the single most significant factor inhibiting the widespread
use of this technology, forcing serial connections to remain tightly coupled
with PC servers. The new performance reported by Comtrol today can resolve
this issue in the vast majority of cases, allowing substitution of Ethernet
for expensive serial cabling.
Company officials disclosed the performance breakthrough as part of a
report
summarizing the results from a performance test of its products against its
primary competitors. Called the "Serial Shoot-Out," the test measured the
elapsed time required to send a one byte block of data from a program running
on a PC server, over the Ethernet to a network serial port, and back again.
The round-trip test was run 10,000 times for each tested server and then
repeated, with the average of the 20,000 iterations used as the final
performance number. Quicker round-trip elapsed time demonstrates greater
efficiency of the network serial port server.
For comparative purposes, the benchmark was also executed on the onboard
serial port of a PC server running Microsoft Windows 2000, because integrated
serial ports are the defacto standard for connecting serial devices that are
"latency sensitive." With millions of PCs installed worldwide that communicate
with attached serial devices, the PC serial port's efficiency is seen as the
"standard to beat" by the emerging network serial port servers. Interest in
deploying network serial port servers is growing steadily because using a LAN
or the Internet in lieu of serial cabling is a very powerful and cost-
effective solution. Industry insiders believe that if a network serial port
server can achieve throughput equivalent to an integrated serial port, it can
then be a viable replacement technology for PC servers with internal serial
expansion cards.
Benchmark results revealed a 5.35 millisecond elapsed time for the
integrated
PC serial port and 8.55 milliseconds for Comtrol's DeviceMaster network serial
port server. When Comtrol's patent-pending Rapid Transport Service
communication protocol was substituted for the industry-standard TCP/IP
protocol used to test all of the products, throughput improved to 5.91
milliseconds-less than one half of a millisecond slower than the directly
connected serial ports! Network serial port servers from Digi International
and Lantronix, Inc. were also tested. The two Digi products tested performed
6-21 times slower than the four Comtrol products tested. The three Lantronix
products tested performed 30-88 times slower than the four Comtrol products
tested. Clearly, the Digi and Lantronix products incurred significantly more
latency than the Comtrol products.
Comtrol officials said that its DeviceMaster family of serial port servers
uses both hardware and software to achieve the breakthrough performance. The
company has filed patents to protect its technology and performance
advantage.
To confirm the results of its testing, Comtrol contracted with an
independent
test service. Comtrol's Serial Shoot-Out White Paper includes the test
methodology, performance results achieved through Comtrol and the test
service, and a copy of the test program itself so that the test can be
performed by anyone. The report is available to interested parties that visit
Comtrol's Web site at www.comtrol.com/shootout and
request a copy.
Company management warned that factors beyond its control, such as network
traffic congestion, can have a negative performance impact diminishing these
results. When throughput is a paramount concern, Comtrol said that customer
engineers could create a network topology that can minimize the potential for
the type of congestion that could degrade throughput performance.
"Using DeviceMaster to provide serial data communications over a network is
like driving a sports car on the Interstate highway," remarked Lee Stagni,
president and COO of Comtrol. "The car has enough power to make a quick trip,
but if the trip is taken during rush-hour, you could easily be late for
dinner." The solution, Comtrol says, is to make sure that DeviceMaster
operates over a low-overhead network. "DeviceMaster provides the horsepower,"
said Stagni, "our customers just need to give us the Express Lane to drive
in."
"This breakthrough is good for Comtrol and great for the industry,"
continued
Stagni. "We want to share our excitement with our customers." In celebration
of the new performance breakthrough, Comtrol also announced the Muscle Car
Sweepstakes, where the Grand Prize winner will receive a 1969 Pontiac GTO
classic muscle car. Contest details are on the Comtrol Web site at
www.comtrol.com/sweepstakes.
About Comtrol Corporation
Comtrol Corporation, based in Minneapolis, is a leading global provider of
device connectivity, data communications, and enterprise integration software
technologies. The company's DeviceMaster and RocketPort products include in-
server serial expansion cards, Ethernet-attached device networking edge
servers, programmable application edge server appliances, and application
software.
Web site www.comtrol.com
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