Performance analysis of high-performance file-transfer systems for Grid applications

Data-intensive Grid applications require the availability of tools able to transfer very large files in the shortest amount of time. Many file-transfer tools, based on solutions aimed at overcoming the limitations imposed by the TCP protocol, have recently been developed. In this paper we experimentally compare the performance of some of these tools in various network scenarios by running experiments on PlanetLab, an open platform for the development, deployment, and access of planetary-scale services, that comprises hundreds of hosts scattered across the globe. Our results show that solutions based on UDP and adopting rate-based algorithms result in better performance than other alternatives in most cases, while solutions based on TCP achieve similar performance only under specific circumstances. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.