r for
switchmetric
Foundry brings home all Gigabit
Ethernet honors; HP holds Fast
Ethernet edge.
BY CHARLIE BRUNO
Network World, 09/13/99
Foundry Networks is king of the
price/performance hill among
Gigabit Ethernet switch makers.
Foundry's TurboIron/8 switch swept all three Gigabit
Ethernet price/performance testing categories - Layer 2,
Layer 3 IP and Layer 3 IPX - in Round Two of the
ongoing series of SwitchMetric tests co-sponsored by
Network World and The Tolly Group.
Complete SwitchMetric test results
In sweeping all three Gigabit Ethernet categories,
Foundry's TurboIron/8 edged out 3Com's SuperStack II
Switch 9300, which last April emerged as the lowest
cost-per-gigabit-of-throughput leader in Layer 2 testing.
The TurboIron/8 lowered the Layer 2 cost per gigabit of
throughput bar, coming in at $1,249, compared to the
standing measurement of $1,325 for 3Com's
SuperStack II Switch 9300.
But while Foundry managed to pull away from 3Com in
the Gigabit Ethernet realm, Hewlett-Packard held on to
its significant lead in the Fast Ethernet Layer 2 contest.
No switch tested in either round of the SwitchMetric has
come close to the $956-per-gigabit-of-throughput ranking
of HP's ProCurve Switch 4000M.
The Network World/Tolly Group SwitchMetric is a new
benchmark intended to help you determine the price you
pay for each gigabit per second of throughput a switch
provides.
For each type of switch, we gave vendors the option of
participating in any or all of three basic tests - Layer 2,
Layer 3 IP and Layer 3 IPX - depending on which
markets they believe their products are best-suited to
serve.
For each protocol, we conducted separate tests with
frame sizes of 64 bytes, 512 bytes and 1,518 bytes.
The cost-per-gigabit-of-throughput results offered are
derived from tests with 1,518-byte frames, which offer
the least processing overhead of all frame sizes tested
and thus should result in the highest throughput.
All tests were conducted in a state-of-the-art test bed
featuring Netcom Systems' SmartBits Advanced
Multiport Performance Tester/Analyzer/Simulators.
In this second round of testing, we put five switches
from four vendors through the price/performance paces
throughout July and August. The switches tested in
Round Two included: Foundry's TurboIron/8 and
FastIron 2; Performance Technologies' Nebula 4000;
Cabletron's SmartSwitch 2200; and 3Com's Core-Builder
3500.
All told, the complete SwitchMetric price/performance
database includes information about eight Gigabit
Ethernet switches, 10 Fast Ethernet switches and a
smattering of FDDI, token-ring and hybrid switch
offerings.
The results: Gigabit switches
On the Gigabit Ethernet switch side, since the start of
the Switch-Metric program all switches tested offered
between eight and 64 ports and were configured in a
fully meshed network design. Nearly all of the switches
tested in both rounds achieved wire-speed throughput at
each frame size, although there were a few exceptions,
such as some 3Com and HP switches.
Foundry's TurboIron/8 proved to be the best value across
all three Gigabit Ethernet switch sectors tested. In the
Layer 2 tests, the TurboIron/8 offered a cost per gigabit
of throughput of $1,249, or about 6% less than 3Com's
SuperStack II Switch 9300. On top of the
cost-per-gigabit-of-throughput advantage, the TurboIron/8
achieved wire-speed throughput in recent testing.
3Com's SuperStack II Switch 9300 achieved 94% of the
maximum throughput in testing 1,518-byte packets
when the product was tested last April. 3Com's
SuperStack II 9300, as well as the company's
CoreBuilder 9400, achieved wire-speed performance in
the April tests using 64- and 512-byte frames.
In the Layer 3 tests, Foundry widened the
cost-per-gigabit lead it enjoys over the competition with
its latest SwitchMetric entry. Test results show that the
TurboIron/8 offers a cost per gigabit of $1,874 for Layer 3
IP throughput. That's 53% less than the cost-per-gigabit
figure of HP's ProCurve Routing Switch 9308M, which
offers a cost per gigabit of $3,515. Foundry offers two
other switches - the BigIron 4000 and BigIron 8000 -
which rate above the HP ProCurve 9308M, but below the
TurboIron/8.
In the Layer 3 IPX tests, the TurboIron/8's
cost-per-gigabit figure of $1,874 replaced the vendor's
own BigIron 4000 as the top-ranked switch in that
category. The BigIron 4000 Layer 3 IPX rating stands at
$2,280 per gigabit of throughput.
Foundry's TurboIron/8 switch draws its processing
power from a design that relies heavily on multiple
onboard Application Specific Integrated Circuits, each of
which is designed to handle per-port wire-speed
processing. The TurboIron/8 also supports Foundry's
multilayer switching feature, which enables the
company's backbone switches to transparently perform
processing-intensive IP and IPX traffic forwarding, freeing
existing routers to handle topology management and
non-IP and IPX traffic.
Fast Ethernet findings
On the Fast Ethernet side, The Tolly Group tested two
new switches, neither of which were able to dethrone
HP's ProCurve Switch 4000M as the
cost-per-gigabit-of-throughput leader among switches in
that category.
Performance Technologies' Nebula 4000 offered a Layer
2 cost-per-gigabit ranking of $2,782, which is
considerably higher than the ProCurve Switch 4000M.
The disparity is due to the fact that the Nebula 4000 is a
multimedia switch that also offers fault tolerance, unlike
basic Fast Ethernet switches that are designed simply
as packet pushers, says Alan Brind, vice president of
marketing and business planning at Performance.
Certainly any switch that offers fault tolerance, such as
Performance's Nebula 4000M, is likely to include a
larger footprint, bigger power supplies, extra cooling
fans, extra hardware and added resiliency, which will
drive up the cost-per-gigabit figure.
The Tolly Group also tested Cabletron's SmartSwitch
2200, a 13-port edge switch that includes 12 local Fast
Ethernet ports and a single ATM OC-3 uplink port. To
date, the SmartSwitch 2200 is the only Fast
Ethernet-to-ATM switch tested in the SwitchMetric. The
device was configured to test 12 Fast Ethernet ports
operating locally, with one Fast Ethernet port feeding
data upstream to the ATM OC-3 port. As configured, the
device offers a cost per gigabit of throughput of $6,915.
Company officials attribute the high price/performance
cost to the single OC-3 port.
"The SmartSwitch 2200 is more than just a fast frame
pumper," says John Pappas, senior program manager in
Cabletron's Strategic Testing Group. "Sure, it can offer
100% wire-speed throughput, but it also offers Layer 4
quality of service [QoS] so you can configure
prioritization over application-specific datastreams.
That's something that cost per gigabit doesn't take into
account."
The Network World/Tolly Group SwitchMetric evaluates
switches on a least-common-denominator basis,
meaning switch throughput and cost variables are the
key comparative criteria. Higher level functionality, such
as Layer 4 switching, QoS functionality and advanced
filtering techniques, are not factored into the
cost-per-gigabit metric.
The next step
Clearly, Foundry has emerged as the
cost-per-gigabit-of-throughput leader among the vendors
that have stepped up to the SwitchMetric challenge.
With an average cost-per-gigabit-of-throughput ranking of
$2,644 among all switches included in this study, the
competition has got some serious catching up to do to
reach the TurboIron/8's $1,249 watermark.
Is any vendor up to the challenge of knocking Foundry
from its perch? We invite any and all to come into the
lab and take their best shot. |
