Quick installation of gigabit backbone switches

From the data, we can see that the current market demand for gigabit backbone switches is not high. Here we mainly analyze the functions and practical applications of mainstream Gigabit backbone switches. In the six Ethernet switches we tested, the EDIMAXES-5800R and LeaPComm6004 switches are not manageable switches, The Accton es00008 and the Thinker3800 switch of the Creative Company are all network tube switches, 3Com4900 is a layer-3 and layer-4 switch, and digital China D-Link DGS3308TG is a layer-3 switch.

Performance first

There are both full copper ports, Full optical fiber ports, and GBIC ports in the six products, of which 3Com4900 has 12 1000Base-T copper ports and acctones00008 has 8 1000Base-SX Optical Fiber ports, shenzhou digital D-linkDGS-3308TG has 6 1000Base-T ports and 2 GBIC interfaces, Thinker3800 and lippleapcomm6004 are 4 vswitches with 1000Base-SX ports. Another point to emphasize is that 3Com 4900 is a layer 3/4 switch, and the DGS-3308TG is a gigabit backbone switch. Throughput is the primary factor to consider in terms of performance. Among the six fully Gigabit backbone switches we collected, 3Com4900, Digital China D-linkDGS-3308TG and EDIMAXES-5800R reached 512 wire speed in the throughput test of 64-byte, 1518 and 100%-byte frames, acctonES4508 and Thinker 3800 both reach the line speed of 512 bytes and 1518 bytes, and do not reach the line speed of 64 bytes.

The environment for full-mesh testing is stricter than the one-to-one environment for throughput. Each port of the switch must receive data sent from other ports and send data to other ports, but 3Com4900, digital shenzhou.com and D-linkDGS-3308TG these three excellent switches still maintain their true color, no packet loss, reached the 100% line speed. Although some other switches reach the line speed in the throughput test, the line speed is not reached in the full mesh environment, for example, although Accton ES4508 and Thinker 3800 reach the 512 line rate in the throughput test of 1518 bytes and 100% bytes, packet loss occurs in the full mesh test and the line rate is not reached.

For a vswitch with a throughput of 100% wire speed, the frame loss rate test result must be 0. Our test shows that the frame loss rate is not zero in the 64-byte test of Thinker3800 and lipleapcomm6004. Latency is used to determine the time when a packet passes through the switch. The delay test results of each switch are quite different. The delay time of the EDIMAXES-5800R of the Gigabit backbone switch is only 3.92us in 64 bytes, network type switch is often longer than the non-network type products Delay Time, and digital China D-linkDGS-3308TG performance is very good, in the case of 100% line speed 64 bytes delay only 4.52us.

It should be noted that the latency of some switches varies greatly at different rates. Even if their throughput is 100% wire speed, a long delay time may be measured at 100% wire speed. For example, the throughput of 3Com4900 with 12 1000Base-T ports is 100% wire speed. The latency measured at 64-byte frames at 100% wire speed is 55.39us, and the result measured at 98% wire speed is 4.07us.

The result of the back-to-back test is the number of frames that are continuously not lost under steady-state load. This value is not significant for a vswitch with a throughput of 100% wire speed. For vswitches whose throughput is not a line rate, the back-to-back test usually reflects the size of the device cache, and the differences between different vswitches are great. During the line blocking test, we found that all switches support this function. When filtering test error frames, we considered the major error frames, such as small frames, ultra-large frames, CRC error frames, fragments, Alignment errors, and Dribble errors, the results show that all vswitches have the filtering function for these error frames.

We also tested the performance of 3Com4900 and digital shenzhou.com in three layers. The test results show that the DGS-3308TG performance is very good, in the three-layer throughput and full mesh test is still 100% wire speed, frame drop rate is 0, delay in 100% wire speed, 64 bytes frame is only 4.56us; 3Com4900 has good performance, and only obtains the value of 99.13% line rate in the throughput test of 64-byte frames. In the latency test, the difference in rate brings a big difference between 3Com4900 and 3Com4900, latency of 64-byte frames and 100% wire speed is 59.41us, while that of 98% wire speed is 4.28us.

Easy installation

We test the Gigabit backbone switch, compared to their powerful forwarding capabilities, their volume is much smaller, especially the digital D-Link DGS-3308TG switch, the performance is very outstanding, it is also a layer-3 switch. Whether physically or mentally, installing a gigabit backbone switch is not an effort-consuming task. We tested 1-gigabit backbone switches, DGS-3308TG, EDIMAXES-5800R and 3Com4900 switches all have 1000Base-T interfaces. The 1000Base-T interfaces of these vswitches support 10/100/Mbit/s adaptive speed and automatic line sequence recognition, eliminating the need for network engineers to connect to vswitches, servers, or routers, this kind of connection should be used for meditation. For some enterprises, the 1000Base-T interface can effectively protect their original investment in wiring.

The gigabit backbone switch we tested is basically fixed and modular. The DGS-3308TG switch has two GBIC interfaces and can adapt to single-mode and multi-mode optical fiber through the GBIC module. The 3Com4900 switch has an expansion slot on the rear panel. The 1000Base-T/SX/LX module can be inserted into a 16-port Gigabit Switch. The Thinker3800 vswitch is composed of a GE Optical Fiber Module inserted into the four slots of the vswitch. It should be said that it is 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 3Com4900 and the DGS-3308TG also provide a redundant power supply design.

The gigabit backbone switch that is sent for test has an option to restore the factory settings. The Thinker3800, DGS-3308TG, and acctones00008 switches support the TFTP protocol to upload the existing configuration file of the switch to the TFTP server, or download the previous configuration file of the switch from the TFTP server. If errors occur in the configuration, these two items are useful to engineers. In the 3Com4900 switch, every time you change the settings, 3Com 4900 automatically saves the settings, which is faster than other manufacturers' dedicated settings to the ROM or RAM.

All the vswitches that support network management can upgrade the software by using TFTP or Xmodem. The 3Com4900 switch was originally a layer-2 switch. With the help of engineers from 3Com, we upgraded the software and changed 3Com4900 to a layer-3 switch ~ A layer-4 switch. You can download the software for free on the website of 3Com. You can manually configure the IP addresses of these Gigabit backbone switches through the serial port, or use DHCP and BOOTP to assign IP addresses to the network management part of the switch. Once the IP address is obtained by the network management proxy of the Gigabit backbone switch, you can easily configure the switch using Telnet and HTTP. Through the configuration of SNMP on the switch, the network administrator can also use the network management software that supports the SNMP protocol to configure the switch.