Lesson 04: Network Considerations

In this topic you will be introduced to various topics related to networking, bandwidth, throughput, latency, TCP protocol, etc…
Disclaimer, any number presented in this lesson is representing an order of magnitude, i.e. an indication. Customer network
topology is extremely important in any network analysis.

Topics in this lesson:

Introduction and Disclaimer
Network
Terminology
Bandwidth
Throughput
TCP Window Size
Bandwidth Requirements
Compression Considerations

45 Min

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Introduction and Disclaimer

This presentation does not in any way engage Dassault Systèmes if the
numbers are used in a production situation without further qualification Packets –
and use case analysis size based on Network Tunnel
Transactional TCP Window size
WAN accelerators, load-balancers or other network equipment – that Network Transactions
Throughput
is up to the hardware vendor or the end-customer
The numbers will evolve over time as there is a strong focus on
optimizing 3DEXPERIENCE platform performance and scalability over
both LANs and WANs

Bandwidth – the transport capacity of a network connection

Available Total
Total Bandwidth: the maximum capacity of a network as measured in Bandwidth Bandwidth
Mbits/sec
Available Bandwidth: the difference between the total bandwidth and
the consumed throughput.

Throughput - the data flow in bits-per-second for a given transaction.

As you see in the graph to the right, the maximum throughput of a
network transfer is related to the TCP Window size (chunks used for
network data transmission) and the latency over the network (RTT)
Note that the most limiting factor on throughput is the latency

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Networking Terminology (1/2)

TCP Window Size – Each node participating in a TCP connection advertises its
available buffer space using the TCP window size field.
This value identifies the maximum amount of data a sender can transmit without
receiving an updated TCP window size via a TCP acknowledgement
in other words, this is the maximum number of “bytes in flight” that are
traversing the network, but remain unacknowledged.
The sender transmits a full window, then waits for window updates before
continuing. As these window updates arrive, the sender advances the window
and may transmit more data.
The TCP Window Size can influence the throughput of a network link up to the
maximum bandwidth size. As we share the same “bandwidth”, we can only
transmit half of the time
The smaller the TCP Window size is the more time is spent waiting for
acknowledgements (ACK), this increases RTT wait time (RTT time is twice the
transmittal time). This, in turn, reduces the amount of data transmitted per
second.
Recent Windows and Linux kernels are now negotiating the optimal TCP
Window Size when transmitting data.

Frame size – is the largest frame a network (segment) can transport. For Ethernet,
this is 1518 bytes by definition.
In certain situation you can use Jumbo Frame to increase the data send in one
exchange.

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Networking Terminology (2/2)
Latency
Definition The round-trip time for a 1500 byte packet
Measured in milliseconds (ms). This
includes the time for data transmission and
acknowledgement between two machines
across all intervening network equipment.
Dependencies The minimum possible latency is highly
dependent on the distance between the
two computers. It is relatively insensitive to
bandwidth.
It is also degraded by the accumulated
delays across intervening network
equipment. (e.g. the best possible latency
from Paris to Singapore over a 2 Mbit/s line
could never be lower than 156 ms)
Effects Excessive latency gives the users the
impression of sluggish performance and
contributes to slow transfers of large files
Ways to Mitigate WAN Accelerators, caching and pattern
matching, reducing the perceived latency.
Note: Traffic must be uncompressed for
the accelerator to maximize efficiency.
© Dassault Systèmes | Confidential Information | 3/14/2023 | ref.: 3DS_Document_2020
Bandwidth
The transport capacity of a network. For a WAN, it is
guaranteed by the network provider and in the case
of multiple providers (a multi-hop jump), the
maximum possible bandwidth will be the lowest
guaranteed bandwidth on the path.
For a WAN, it is guaranteed by the network provider
but can be shared with other applications and in
cases of smaller providers with other customers of
the provider.
Bandwidth requirements also are lower as latency
increases because maximum throughput is lower
(e.g. with TCP Window size of 64k and latency of 150
ms, the maximum throughput is 3.3 Mbits/sec)
Throughput = WinSize*8byte/latency
Low bandwidth can impact high throughput data
transfers and cause poor application load time
Remote FCS permits local saving of large files and
automated synchronization back to the central site to
improve the end-user remote performance by storing
large files close to the user
Chattiness
The number of individual network requests made by
an Application over a network. A single transaction
by a user in a GUI could result on tens or hundreds
of client/server requests over the WAN.
The number of individual network requests is
typically a function or the client (or server) code itself
and the exploitation of network protocols that make
a large amount of calls back and forth.
The architecture of 3DEXPERIENCE platform is
designed to work “Online” based on a n-tier web
application server architecture.
Chattiness from one application to another can lead
to very poor performance due to the accumulation of
many small transactions
Improvements must be made at the application
level.
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Bandwidth Requirements (1/3)

How much network capacity do I need?

Let’s make some assumptions, see table bellow
Let’s work out the download requirement of this user for 1h

Action Size Application Bandwidth

Download 75 pages 75 * 50 KB 3DSpace (~33%)
Download 15 15 * 500 KB FCS (~66%)
documents Throughput
Total MB / hour 11,25 MB / hour
Total kbits / sec 25 kbps Client side

Rough estimated throughput per concurrent user is

~8 kbps between the client from the 3DSpace
~17 kbps between the client from the FCS
If we assume 25 concurrent user (CCU), the server will see:
~224 kbps between the 3DSpace to clients
~425 kbps between FCS to clients
If we assume the latency to 50ms & 64k Windows size, we have at total of about 10Mbits
So we are ok

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Bandwidth Requirements (2/3)

In order to do a network load evaluation, you must get from the customer there average file size/type

File Format Example

CATIA V5 – CATPart 100 MB
CATIA V6 – 3DShape 110MB
CATIA V6 – CGR 11 MB
CATIA V6 – 3D Thumbnail 3.7 MB
CATIA V6 – 3DIndex (estimated) 1.1 MB
MS Word 500KB
PPT 5MB
Etc…

For the WWW page size & metadata this need to be captured directly at the client station
Following a realistic work scenario, with no upload or download of file
Then it’s the total byte / # of pages

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Bandwidth Requirements (3/3)

Recommendation:
Get a network map from the customer, and look at the segment bandwidths
Be aware that customers usually will show you theoretical limits (i.e., what they have purchased) of each segment
This does not account for e-mail and other packets that may already be on the segment
You may have to get the average saturation of each segment from their Internet & Network Service Provider
Ensure that multi-hop paths are labelled with the minimum available bandwidth of any of its segments

The Native Apps is chatty, this is why it’s very sensitive to the latency
The bandwidth is not as important than latency (RTT)
For the native app, the download of the CAD may not be the costly part of the transaction.

(Considerations On Cloud)

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Compression Considerations (1/2)

Compression can be used to reduce network load

Native Apps compression is always enabled from server to client
3DSpace compression can be enabled (not on by default)
FCS compression can be enabled (not on by default)

Some compression caveats

If a WAN accelerator is deployed
Compression should be globally disabled
If a WAN accelerator is deployed all Native Apps 3DSpace communication should be excluded from the accelerated data flow using a filter
(we do not want to “accelerate” the Native App to 3DSpace communication)
FCS Synchronization needs to be studied, case by case.

Best practices
Disable compression for LAN clients
Selectively use compression for WAN clients
With a WAN Accelerator,
Compression could be applied for one way, from Native Client to Server
Ensure that all URIs with “sidl” in them are filtered out of the caching mechanism
FCS are taking benefit of the appliance

Installation and Setup | 3DEXPERIENCE Platform | 3DEXPERIENCE platform Administration | Native Apps Preferences |
Common Preferences | General | Cache and Performance | Data Compression

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Compression Considerations (2/2)

WAN Accelerators
The Apache compression module mod_deflate must be disabled in this case
If using https, an SSL adapter must be added to the WAN Accelerator to decrypt the data before caching and pattern matching against it
Note that Dassault Systèmes does not perform any load-testing with WAN Accelerators so will not certify or recommend any particular device
It is up to the customer to perform an ROI study to determine whether it is worth the investment
Benefit of deploying a WAN accelerator must be studied from a enterprise point of view as all can benefit.

Remote FCS
In general, as soon as there are Native Apps on a remote site, an FCS is recommended to reduce WAN impacts on file transfers
The Web Apps do not normally require a remote FCS with the exception of xCAD clients which do typically require an FCS on their local LAN
Note that for synchronization of Remote FCS with a Central FCS, there are both on -demand and on-command synchronization facilities as
described in the FCS presentation
The FCS Sync Server also offers multi-threaded synchronization (called concurrency in the tool) which can be used to maximize throughput for
transfers. Care must be taken however not to saturate networks by being overly generous with the concurrency setting. The default is 6, higher
values must be tested before moved into production

WAN Performance Remote Bandwidth Latency to Bandwidth to

Caveats
Improvements NativeApps Utilization Central FCS Central FCS
High Upload and Download Times
No FCS Necessary No < 40% Up to 150 ms 1.5Mbps + Web Apps Only

WAN Accelerator 150 ms -> Compression in Apache must be disabled

No < 60% 512Kbps +
could be beneficial 400 ms Web Apps Only
Remote FCS WAN latency impact to UI response times
Yes < 60% Over 10 ms 44.7Mbps +
Recommended Highly Recommended for Native Apps

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