Abstract

TeamWARE Group commissioned The Tolly Group to compare the performance and scalability of SNA gateway products from TeamWARE Group, Microsoft Corporation, and Novell Corp. The Tolly Group gauged the transaction throughput of central site (located at the mainframe site) and remote site (located at the branch office) gateway configurations across a 64 Kbit/s WAN connection. The gateway throughput was also benchmarked in a local token ring environment where bandwidth is not a limiting factor. The TCP/ IP protocol was used for all client-to- gateway communications, while native SNA flowed between the gateway machines and the mainframe.

The Tolly Group found that the HighWay SNA products demonstrated the highest throughput under load of the central-site gateways when small-frame transactions were processed across the 64 Kbit/s WAN. When the gateway was located at the remote site, HighWay SNA Server for Windows NT outperformed Microsoft SNA Server at all load levels. The HighWay SNA products achieve such throughput levels by using the WAN link more efficiently than Novell NetWare for SAA and Microsoft SNA Server. In a local token ring environment, the HighWay SNA products also deliver performance that scales well as loads increase and is com-parable to the other products evaluated.