10G Ethernet switch 6808 Comprehensive Test report

Earlier Ethernet switches used the architecture of Gigabit Ethernet switches, but added the 10GE module to support 10 Gbit/s Ethernet. We once made a 10G Ethernet topic named "10g power" in a newspaper in October 13. Many manufacturers mentioned that the early 10G Ethernet products only reached half of the throughput specified in the standard, and some of them produced large latency.

What is the current 10G Ethernet switch? The Hong Kong Bay network company launched its own BigHammer6800 series smart multi-layer backbone switch based on the 10G platform. We tested BigHammer6808. According to the test results, it implements 10 Gbit/s line rate forwarding with little latency.

Smart 10g route Switch

The BigHammer6808 of the WAN network is a core product in Ethernet. It can be used as the core aggregation of the Metropolitan Area Network or as the core of the campus network. BigHammer6808 has eight slots, of which 4 and 5 are dedicated to the main control module. On the one hand, the main control module is responsible for the overall monitoring of Ethernet switches and the synchronization of Route tables. It also integrates the switching engine and switching matrix to implement the switching function between various business modules.

BigHammer6808 adopts a fully distributed switching architecture. Each Service Interface Module is distributed with a dedicated ASIC hardware forwarding engine and has independent CPU, memory, and other hardware. In this way, the two 10GE ports on the same module can communicate with each other and forward at the same speed. BigHammer6808 supports a maximum of 14 10g ports and a maximum of 252 Gigabit ports. The early 10GE switch follows the architecture of a Gigabit Ethernet switch. It only supports 10G Ethernet by adding a 10GE module. However, it mainly aims to achieve-gigabit wire speed switching. The bandwidth between the service interface module of this type of switch and the center switch module is up to 8 Gbps. BigHammer6808 is based on a high-performance ASIC and uses an exchange matrix structure. The current total switching capacity is 256 Gbps. The duplex channel from each business interface module to the central switch module is 32 Gbps.

Challenges to 10GE Performance

In the past, the 10GE interface was often used as a substitute for multiple Gigabit Links of two core switches. Looking forward to the future, this network construction model may change. For example, many large enterprise users may require a ring or mesh structure in their man or campus networks. This puts forward higher requirements on the switch capacity of the core switch. On the one hand, there are many 10GE interfaces and on the other hand, high-performance forwarding between 10GE interfaces. Therefore, each core switch must have at least two 10GE interfaces and a high-density Gigabit interface. According to this requirement, harbor has developed a 10G Ethernet module with 2 ports. Although the industry is not optimistic about the popularity of 10GE today, the popularity of 10GE is an inevitable trend. We should make some plans when purchasing core switches.

So, can BigHammer6808 support 10 Ge line rate forwarding, especially between 10 GE ports located on different modules? What is the latency? In view of this, we have tested the inter-board forwarding performance of BigHammer6808. The test delivery product provides two single-mode 10GE optical fiber interface modules, one main control module, and the Hammer OS version of the device software is 2.1.

Line rate forwarding

We tested the forwarding performance of Layer 2 and Layer 3 respectively. Throughput, latency, frame drop rate, and back-to-back frame are tested.

1. throughput Test

Through tests, we can find that BigHammer6808 can achieve line rate forwarding between 2/3 layers when the frame drop rate is zero.

2. latency test

We use the transmission rate obtained from the throughput test to test the latency of the switch. We can find that the forwarding latency of layer 2/3 of BigHammer6808 is relatively small under the condition of online speed. Inter-board L2 latency test results inter-board L3 latency test results.

3. Frame drop rate test

During multiple 2/3-layer frame drop rate tests, no frame is dropped when the switch forwards data at 90% and 100% of the 10g line rate. Because we have tested the throughput results for multiple times as the line rate, we can expect that no frame is dropped.

4. Back-to-Back (Back) test

During back-to-back testing, packets are sent at wire speed. If frames are dropped, the burst length is reduced and re-tested until the maximum number of burst frames that can be processed by the tested switch without frame loss is obtained. This value reflects the switch's ability to process burst frames. The packet sending time at the wire speed is 2 seconds. The result of the back-to-back test of the wire speed forwarding switch should be 2 seconds. We have verified this in all the test results at Layer 2/3.

High Availability and powerful functions

BigHammer6808 provides high availability. This product supports two main control modules. The 5th slot can also be used as the business board slot. In addition, all modules support hot swapping. BigHammer6808 system power supply adopts 2 + 1 redundant backup. In addition, BigHammer6808 and BigHammer6802, Sister products of the same series, can achieve the interuse of all interface modules. The product provided a BH-2GBIC10GTX module in BigHammer6808 as the interface module, while BigHammer6802 can be used as the main control module. This general design protects users' investment and reduces the pressure on spare parts of users and distributors.

Although it is a vswitch, this product also supports multiple functions such as MPLS and VPN. Since the focus of this test is on forwarding performance, we did not test these functions one by one. Through this test, we can see that BigHammer6808 achieves 10 GE Interface line rate forwarding between boards. It is a real 10G Ethernet switch, marking that the 10g performance of BigHammer6808 has entered the leading international ranks.

Test Method

In this test, we use the Adtech AX/4000 Broadband Network Testing Platform of Spirent Communications and two UNI-PHY testing modules and related testing software Router Performance Tester 4.43. We have tested the forwarding performance of the inter-board layer-7 Ethernet switch, and used BigHammer6808 two interface modules. The model is BH-2x10GE. Each module has a port for testing. Based on RFC1242 and RFC2544, we tested four indicators: throughput, latency, frame drop rate, and back-to-back frame. Two 10 Gbit/s ports of the Ethernet switch support bidirectional full-duplex packet forwarding.

The difference in this layer-3 forwarding performance test is that the source and target nodes of the layer-3 test are located in different subnets, and the interconnection between them must span different VLANs on the switch. As a layer-3 Switch, BigHammer6808 implements data transmission between different VLANs through layer-3 switching. In this test, we selected three representative package lengths: 64, 512, and 1518 bytes. Each test is repeated three times. By taking the average value, the contingency caused by a single test is avoided.

Throughput is one of the most important indicators that reflect vswitch performance. The frame drop rate is 0, and the test duration for each test is 120 s. If the throughput of A vswitch reaches 100% of the bandwidth without frame loss, we call it line rate forwarding. Latency is another important indicator to measure the performance of the Ethernet switch. The larger the latency, the slower the frame processing speed of the switch. The packet sending rate is the throughput of the corresponding packet length. The duration of each test is 120 s. Frame drop Rate (Loss Rate) is used to describe the performance of a vswitch under overload. The packet length used in the test is the same as that in the throughput test. The frame drop rate is measured under different loads. The load we used this time is 100% and 90% of the line rate, the back-to-back frame test reflects the switch's ability to process burst frames. The initial test time is 2 seconds.