Comprehensive Testing Report on mainstream Gigabit access switches

There are many things worth learning about the Gigabit access switch. Here we will mainly introduce the test report of the Gigabit access switch. More than a year after the last two-layer Gigabit Ethernet switch test in the testing lab of the online world, mainstream Gigabit access switch products in the Chinese market have undergone qualitative changes in performance, QoS, security, and other intelligent indicators, ease of use, and price!

In this field that was once considered to be the most homogeneous, with the improvement of the independent development capability of the participating vendors and the deep understanding of user application requirements, they strive to get out of the strange circle of homogeneity! This test also tells us that if manufacturers, media, and users still look at the two-layer Gigabit access switch products and markets from a traditional perspective, it is possible to make mistakes in market product strategies, news reports, and investments. "Let's take a look !" This is applicable to the second-layer Gigabit access switch field, which is believed to be mature and rarely changed!

Ding He technology Arlotto), Shanghai Boda Data Communication Co., Ltd., youxun network D-Link), Chushan network Co., Ltd., Shenzhen greenent Communication Technology Co., Ltd., hanya system Co., Ltd., Netcore China Co., Ltd., Lenovo network, Tsinghua Ziguang biwei Network Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing omnidirectional Technology Co., Ltd., TCL Network device Shenzhen) A total of 12 manufacturers participated in our test. A total of 14 products are available for the network management layer 2 Gigabit access switch. Among them, youxun network and Tsinghua Ziguang biwei two companies also sent their 48 ports and two Gigabit high-density Gigabit access switches. We are deeply admired for their continuous focus in this field and their pursuit of providing users with better performance, rich functions, ease of use, and cheaper products!

Performance Overview

Performance improvement is the goal that network equipment products have always pursued, especially for vswitches, this performance test on 14 L2 access switches has made us feel the great improvements in the performance of the switches, including one-to-one throughput, frame loss rate, latency, and Back to Back, even more rigorous mesh tests show us the progress of switch technologies and products over the past year.

Although we still insist on using a strict test time of 120 seconds, the tested switch can withstand this pressure for several indicators specified in RFC 2544, the tests were quite successful. The frame loss rate of all vswitches is 0 for the length of 64, 512, and 1518 bytes, and no packet loss is returned from the Back to Back test results. All packets sent at the wire speed within 2 seconds can be correctly forwarded. In the throughput test of the port to the port, Lenovo's iSpirit 2924G lost several packets. When the allowed Frame loss rate of all other products is 0, the results of 100% line rate were obtained for all three frames.

According to the latency analysis, although there are some differences between different vswitches, most of the test delivery products, whether Mbit/s latency or Gbit/s latency, are below 10 Gbit/s. The best performance of latency is the BitStream 3224TMS tested by Qinghua Ziguang biwei. The results of the three frames are exactly the same, with 1.8 Gbit/s latency and 2.6 Gbit/s latency. Netcore also delivers excellent performance. It has also achieved the same results in three frame lengths: 1.9 Gbit/s latency and 2.9 Gbit/s latency. The mesh test is a more rigorous test environment. In the test, each gigabit network and 10 10-Gigabit network are used as part of the two-way network communication, and the remaining Gigabit ports are used as the topology of the all-mesh communication, we pay more attention to the mesh test because the mesh test is closer to the topology environment of the actual application and better reflects the differences between the tested switches. However, in this test, we can see that half of the products can be completely free from packet loss in the mesh test, which also reflects the increasingly perfect performance of such switches, including D-link DES 3226 S, omnidirectional Q8224I, Ding He technology S5220M, Lenovo network iSpirit 2924G, Netcore 7224NS-M, Chashan network V1724, and Han ya Rustle 3224N.

The address learning rate test aims to obtain the maximum address learning rate of the tested vswitch. When learning 2000 addresses, except for Netcore 7224NS-M, it can only reach 148810pps when learning 100 addresses, in addition to 148810pps, all other tested products can learn 2000 addresses at a speed of 148810pps. The address table depth determines the maximum number of address table items that the switch can support. Different switches vary greatly in this project, but they all exceed 2000, can meet the actual needs of gigabit network edge, the largest address table is Zhao Wei xiaotong CES-2402MG, the address table depth reaches 25642. Ding He technology's S5220M also performed well and got 24721 results.

The error frame Filtering test shows the capability of the Gigabit access switch to handle errors or abnormal frames. These error frames include OverSize of ultra-long frames, 1523 byte frames), UnderSize of ultra-small frames, and 63 byte frames) CRC, Alignment, and Dribble errors. The test results show that the omnidirectional Q8224I, dinhe technology S5220M, zhaowei xiaotong CES-2402MG, TCL S4226MFH, Tsinghua Ziguang biwei BitStream 3250TG did not pass the ultra-large frame test, the reason may be that the switch chip uses the ultra-large frame as a frame with the 802.1Q mark, so it forwards the frame normally without filtering. All other error frames are filtered out correctly. The HOL control test is used to determine how the tested device handles congestion and to check the impact of the congestion port on the non-congested port. It determines whether the line congestion exists. Regardless of the length of the 64-, 512-, or 1518-byte frame, the test speed ranges from 80%, 90% to 100%. All tested devices are performing well and there is no line congestion, supports HOL control.

We hope to use the forwarding pressure test to measure the ability of the switch to forward data packets over the wire speed. For vswitches with 24 x 100Base-T + 2x512 M ports, the data packets sent in 64, 1518, and 202183728 Of the 60-second test time are 31153693, 10744734, and respectively, the number of data packets forwarded at the wire speed is 196428900, 31014840, and 10727880. The result shows that although the vswitch does not receive all data packets sent at the superline speed, most vswitches can receive data packets at a speed greater than 100%.

Feature Overview

When we send a test invitation letter to the vendor, we explicitly propose that the Gigabit access switch to be tested should be a remote network management product. This is because, if the user's budget permits, it is increasingly important to build a manageable network. On the other hand, network convergence, network security, and multi-service bearer have become inevitable trends. From the perspective of better investment protection, we think it is worthwhile to consider more functions today. Our assessment of the functions of the 14 vswitches mainly involves the following aspects: scalability, QoS, and security. This reflects the smart features of the vswitch and management features, the last aspect is ease of use, which mainly assesses the documentation and website support provided by the switch manufacturer ).

Scalability

In terms of scalability, we mainly focus on the expansion slots of the tested products. The expansion slots of this test are mostly used to insert Gigabit ports and stack modules. It should be said that the most imaginative thing here is that greenent provides two 8-port expansion slots on the front panel, which can be used for m optical interfaces and is suitable for broadband community construction. The 48-port switch, Netcore, and Lenovo vswitches of D-Link and Tsinghua Ziguang biwei provide fixed configuration Gigabit copper interfaces, and the shared interfaces of GBIC are flexible. Stack is also a very important feature. Some products provide virtual stack capabilities, without dedicated cables and modules, and use Gigabit Links for interconnection. However, the reliability of dedicated stack is usually higher. Link aggregation is a good way to expand bandwidth and build a robust network. The IEEE 802.3ad standard support can easily establish such a link group between switches. The vswitches tested in this test have good performance in this aspect.

Auto MDI/X

This is a very practical feature. Products with this feature do not have to worry about the cabling issue when connecting switches and terminals. All the products in this test support this function, which is greatly improved compared with a year ago.

Port Image

This function is very important for network administrators. Combined with tools such as Sniffer, it can flexibly find the problem in the network. The products tested in this test have good support for this.

QoS

In QoS, the number of hardware port queues is a basic indicator. If a vswitch can only provide two egress queues, the service quality that can be provided in multiple applications will be very limited. It can be seen that the products with powerful QoS generally provide more than four port queues. The Gigabit ports of the Hana system provide eight queues, which is the most powerful. IEEE 802.1p is a standard included in IEEE 802.1D and provides eight priorities. All the products provided for test support this standard.

DSCP is a common and new QoS standard in the IP field. All the products that support this function in this test are products with rich QoS functions. It can also identify the layer-4 Information of data packets and rewrite the information based on the QoS policy set on the vswitch. It is worth noting that, instead of a product that supports DSCP, data packets can be identified and overwritten Based on layer-4 (layer-4) information. This is a coincidence. It should be said that it supports identification of Layer 3/4 information, and QoS is truly meaningful, because there are few terminals and software that support IEEE 802.1p in actual applications. Many switches that only support IEEE 802.1p. In QoS settings, the priority of a physical port is usually specified through the network management, and the IEEE 802.1 p is specified, alternatively, you can bind the IEEE 802.1p settings with the vlan id. After all, this setting is very troublesome and inflexible, and cannot provide services based on Application Intelligence.

PQ and WRR are congestion scheduling algorithms. In strict PQ conditions, all network resources are provided to high-priority data packets. The WRR algorithm can selectively discard packets of different priorities based on a certain weight and proportion. The tested product supports this function, which not only sets WRR according to the packet loss ratio, but also sets WRR according to the packet delay limit. Rate limiting is a feature that many users are concerned about, especially in large Campus Networks and telecom networks. A total of 7 products support this function. Some products can also limit the number of physical ports based on the MAC address, IP address, VLAN, and layer-4 port number of data packets. Half-duplex back pressure and full-duplex 802.3x congestion control functions can be well supported by this test. All the switches we tested support the broadcast storm control function. Most products start and discard data packets when the number of broadcast frames in the switch reaches a threshold.

Security

In security, the first step is VLAN technology, which can isolate broadcast domains in a switch. From the perspective of this product, there is little difference. Generally, Port-based and IEEE 802.1Q-based VLAN technologies are supported. Netcore supports VLAN division by protocol. The so-called smart switch must have strong QoS and support for ACL. Some older switches support filtering MAC addresses. It should be said that this cannot be a real ACL. The ACL should be able to identify and filter data based on multiple headers, such as MAC addresses, IP addresses, protocol types, and layer-4 port numbers. We have tested six vswitches that support the IEEE 802.1x protocol. IEEE 802.1x should be able to implement authentication control based on RADIUS and TACACS + technology to enable and disable port access control.

The two-layer switch should control MAC addresses, which is the strength of security control. All the switches we tested support static MAC address tables. Some Gigabit access switches can limit the number of MAC addresses learned on each port to prevent unauthenticated hosts from connecting to the network. The gigabit access switch working on the edge of the network, due to cost constraints, implementing redundancy of power supply, ports, control systems, and heat dissipation systems is unrealistic. We pay more attention to software features. All the products we tested can better support the STP function. IEEE 802.1w protocol is an upgraded version of STP, which can quickly achieve convergence in a ring network environment, some products already provide support.

Network Management

All the products we test can provide remote network management, that is, support for RMON-monitoring switch working status. Support for SNMP is essential for management through network management software. In the tested product, the two Gigabit access switches of D-link can also support the new SNMPv3 protocol. In addition to SNMP, all the tested products provide the CLI configuration interface that can be remotely managed via telnet. From the test results, the command line method in CLI is greater than that in the previous test. In view of the intelligent trend, the command line method is more flexible than the menu method. The tested products basically support Web management. However, these Web pages do not provide any helpful options and do not really take advantage of the graphic interface. In addition, for QoS policy settings and other configurations, Web configuration is relatively cumbersome.

Ease of use

It should be said that the usability of different products is uneven. We mainly measure the random data in the device packing box and the website support capability. Some manufacturers' manuals are not comprehensive, and some functions and protocols are not comprehensive. Some companies can only provide instructions in English, and the quality of Chinese translation needs to be discounted. Lenovo and greennett are doing well in this regard.

For many users, the vendor's website is an important place for subsequent support. We mainly checked whether the vendor has A Chinese website, Q & A, document download, and subsequent software download capabilities. Some Manufacturers' websites have incomplete problems, and few support information is provided for the test products, such as related documents and software.