In this section, we present and evaluate TCP/IP, M-VIA, LAM, MPICH, and MVICH point-to-point communication performance using the various Gigabit Ethernet NICs mentioned earlier. The throughput graph is plotted using throughput versus transfer block size. Throughput is reported in megabits per second (Mbps) and block size is reported in bytes since they are the common measurements used among vendors. The throughput graph clearly shows the throughput for each transfer block size and the maximum attainable throughput. The throughput graph combined with application specific requirements will help programmers to decide what block size to use for transmission in order to maximize the achievable bandwidth. The signature (latency) graph is plotted using throughput per second versus total transfer time elapsed in the test. In NetPIPE, the latency is determined from the signature graph. The network latency is represented by the time to transfer 1 byte and thus coincides with the time of the first data point on the graph.