Gigabit Backbone Switch Test

Of the six Ethernet switches we tested, the Edimax es-5800r and LeaPComm6004 switches are not managed switches, Accton ES4508, and the Thinker3800 switches of the creators are all network-management switches, 3Com 4900 is to support the three-layer and four-layer switch, Shenzhou digital D-link DGS3308TG is a three-tier switch.

Performance is the brunt

The 6 products include all copper ports, all fiber ports, and gbic ports, of which 3Com 4900 has 12 1000base-t copper ports, Accton ES4508 with 8 1000base-sx fibre ports, Shenzhou digital D-link The DGS-3308TG has 6 1000base-t ports and 2 gbic interfaces, and the Thinker3800 and Lipu LeapComm6004 are all 4 1000BASE-SX-port switches. Another point to emphasize is that 3Com 4900 is a 3/4-tier switch, and DGS-3308TG is a three-tier switch.

Throughput is the primary factor to consider in performance. Of the 6 gigabit backbone switches We have collected, 3Com 4900, Shenzhou digital D-LINKDGS-3308TG and Edimax es-5800r three have reached 512 line speeds in throughput tests for 64-byte, 1518-, and 100%-byte frames, Accton The ES4508 and thinker 3800 reach 100% wire speeds in 512-byte, 1518-byte frames, and are not up to the line speed for only 64-byte frames.

A fully meshed test environment is stricter than a one-to-one environment for throughput, requiring each port in the switch to receive data sent from other ports, as well as sending data to other ports, but 3Com 4900, Shenzhou digital D-link DGS-3308TG and Edimax ES-5800R these three excellent switches remain the same color, did not lose the packet, reached 100% wire speed. While other switches have reached the wire speed in the throughput test, they did not reach the wire speed in the full mesh environment, such as Accton ES4508 and thinker 3800, although the 512-byte, 1518-byte frames in the throughput test reached 100% wire speeds, but there was a packet loss phenomenon in the full mesh test. Line speed not reached.

For a switch with a throughput of 100% wire speeds, the frame loss test results must be 0, and our tests show that only the creators Thinker3800 and Lipu LeapComm6004 have a frame loss rate of zero in the 64-byte test.

Delay is used to determine the time that a packet passes through the switch, the results of each switch delay test are quite different, and the EDIMAX switch is not network-oriented ES-5800R delay time in 64 bytes only 3.92us, network management switches tend to be longer than the non-network-oriented products, and the digital D-link DGS-3308TG performance is very good, in 100% wire speed case 64 bytes delay only 4.52us.

It is important to point out that some switches vary greatly in their latency at different speeds, even if their throughput is 100% wire speed, and may be measured at a relatively long delay at 100% wire speeds. For example, with 12 1000base-t ports 3Com 4900 throughput is 100% line speed, we at 100% wire speed 64 byte frames measured by the delay value of 55.39us, and at 98% wire speed measured results are 4.07us.

Back-to-back test results are the number of frames that can be obtained with steady-state load and the value is not significant for a switch with a throughput result of 100% wire speed. For switches with throughput not wire speed, back-to-back testing can often reflect the size of the device cache, and different switches vary widely.

We found that all switches support this feature when we are conducting a line-end blocking test. When we test the error frame filtering, we consider the main error frames of small frame, oversized frame, CRC error frame, fragment, alignment error and dribble error, and the result shows that each switch has filtering function to these error frames.

We also tested the performance of the 3Com 4900 and Shenzhou digital D-link DGS-3308TG at three levels. Test results show that the DGS-3308TG performance is very good, in the three-layer throughput and full network test is still 100% wire speed, the frame rate is 0, delay at 100% wire speed, 64 bytes frame only for 4.56us;3com 4900 performance is also a great, The 99.13%-wire-speed value is obtained only in 64-byte-frame throughput tests, and the difference in rate in the latency test results in a significantly different result for 3com4900, with a delay of 59.41us at 64-byte frames, 100%-wire speeds, and 4.28us at 98%-wire speeds.

Easy to install

The gigabit backbone switches we tested are much smaller in size than their powerful forwarding capabilities, especially the DGS-3308TG switches of the digital D-link, which are highly functional and three-tier switches. The installation of Gigabit Ethernet backbone switches is not a matter of effort, physically or mentally.

The gigabit backbone switches we tested, DGS-3308TG, Edimax es-5800r and 3Com 4900 switches all have 1000BASE-T interfaces. These switch 1000BASE-T interfaces are able to support the 10/100/1000m rate of the adaptive, but also support automatic line order recognition, eliminates the network engineers in the connection to the switch, server or router, think of the same line. and 1000BASE-T interface for some enterprises, can be very good protection of the original wiring in the investment.

The gigabit backbone switch we tested is basically a fixed-configuration modular type. The DGS-3308TG switch has two gbic interfaces, which can be adapted to single-mode and multimode fibers through the gbic modules. The 3Com 4900 switch has an expansion slot on the back panel, and the 1000BASE-T/SX/LX module can be plugged into a 16-port gigabit switch. The Thinker3800 switch, which is made by inserting a gigabit fibre module into the four slots of the switch, should be said to be more flexible in configuration.

Most of the switches we receive have only one AC power supply, while the Accton ES4508 provides a DC power interface, while the 3Com 4900 and DGS-3308TG also provide a redundant power supply design.

The network management switches that are being tested have an option to restore the factory settings. The Thinker3800, DGS-3308TG, Accton ES4508 switches support the TFTP protocol to upload the existing configuration files to the TFTP server, or to download the previous configuration file from the TFTP server. If there are errors in the configuration, both of these are useful to engineers. 3Com 4900 of the company's switches, every time the settings are changed, 3Com 4900 will automatically save settings, save faster than other vendors dedicated to the storage configuration to ROM or ram faster.

These support network management switches can upgrade the software, the upgrade method is through TFTP or through the serial port to use Xmodem such a protocol. The 3Com 4900 switch was originally a 2 layer switch, with the help of the 3Com company engineers, we upgraded the software, 3Com 4900 became a 3~4 layer switch. You can download the software for free on the website of 3Com company.

These network management switches can manually configure the IP address of the switch through the serial port, and can also use DHCP and BOOTP two ways to assign IP address to the network management part of the switch. Once the agent of the network administrator of the switch obtains the IP address, the user can conveniently configure the switch with Telnet and HTTP. Through the configuration of the switch SNMP, the network administrator can configure the switch with the network management software which supports the SNMP protocol.