Abstract

Novell, Inc. and IBM Corp. jointly commissioned The Tolly Group to compare the processing efficiency of Novell, Inc. NetWare for SAA Version 2.2 and Microsoft Corp. SNA Server version 2.11 Service Pack 1 (SP1). The Tolly Group measured transaction throughput, CPU utilization, single client response time, and file transfer time for each product when servicing up to 60 LU sessions in a local token ring environment. 

Due to the fact that each gateway requires a different base operating system, (Novell NetWare Server version 4.11 in the case of NetWare for SAA version 2.2 and Windows NT Server version 3.51 Service Pack 4 (SP4) for SNA Server version 2.11 SP1) the gate- ways are compared as complete systems. Both gateways were tested on the same hardware. NetWare for SAA was tested using SPX as the transport protocol. SNA Server was tested using SPX and then again using TCP. 

NetWare for SAA delivered higher throughput, registered lower CPU utilization, turned in lower response times, and logged faster file transfer times than SNA Server. These results indicate that NetWare for SAA operates significantly more efficiently than this version of Microsoft SNA Server.