Viewpoint: Performance Test of gigabit backbone switch

Currently, the mainstream Gigabit backbone switches have high forwarding capabilities and smaller sizes. They are suitable for common users. Among the six Ethernet switches we have tested, EDIMAX ES-5800R and LeaPComm6004 switch is not manageable switch, Accton es00008 and creative company Thinker3800 switch are network tube type switch, 3Com 4900 is support Layer 3 and Layer 4 switch, digital China D-Link DGS3308TG is a layer-3 switch.

Performance first

Among the six products, there are both full copper ports, Full optical fiber ports, and ports with GBIC ports. Among them, 3Com 4900 has 12 1000Base-T copper ports, accton ES4508 with 8 1000Base-SX fiber port, Shenzhou digital D-link DGS-3308TG has 6 1000Base-T port and 2 GBIC interface, Thinker3800 and lipleapcomm6004 are 4 1000Base-SX ports switch. Another point to emphasize is that 3Com 4900 is a layer 3/4 switch, and the DGS-3308TG is a layer-3 switch.

Throughput is the primary factor to consider in terms of performance. Among the six fully Gigabit backbone switches we collected, 3Com 4900, Digital China D-linkDGS-3308TG and EDIMAX ES-5800R reached 512 wire speed in throughput tests of 64-byte, 1518 and 100%-byte frames, accton ES4508 and Thinker 3800 both reach the line speed of 512 bytes and 1518 bytes, and only 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 3Com 4900, Digital China D-link DGS-3308TG and EDIMAX ES-5800R, these three excellent switches still maintain the 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.

Delay is used to determine the time when a packet passes through the switch, the results of the delay test of each Gigabit backbone switch are quite different. The delay time of the EDIMAX ES-5800R of the non-Network-tube switch is only 3.92us in 64 bytes, the network type switch is often longer than the non-network type products Delay Time, and digital D-link DGS-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, if the throughput of 3Com 4900 with 12 1000Base-T ports is 100% wire speed, the latency value measured when 64-byte frames at 100% wire speed is 55.39us, the result measured at the 98% line rate 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 Gigabit backbone 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 3Com 4900 and Shenzhou digital D-link DGS-3308TG on Layer 3. 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; the 3Com 4900 performance is also good, and only gets the 99.13% line rate value in the 64-byte frame throughput test. In the latency test, the difference in the 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, EDIMAX ES-5800R and 3Com 4900 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 3Com 4900 switch has an expansion slot on the rear panel. The 1000Base-T/SX/LX module can be inserted into a 16-port Gigabit backbone 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 3Com 4900 and DGS-3308TG also provide redundant power supply design.

All the netmanager switches that are sent to the test have an option to restore the factory settings. The Thinker3800, DGS-3308TG, and Accton ES4508 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 3Com 4900 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 3Com 4900 switch was originally a layer-2 switch. With the help of engineers from 3Com, we upgraded the software. 3Com 4900 was changed to a 3-layer switch ~ A layer-4 switch. You can download the software for free on the website of 3Com. These vswitches can manually configure the IP address of the vswitch through the serial port, or assign IP addresses to the network management part of the vswitch through DHCP and BOOTP. Once the network management proxy of the vswitch obtains the IP address, you can easily configure the vswitch 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.

Instruction book-textbook?

Several Gigabit backbone switches provided for test are provided with detailed documentation. Here we first introduced the instructions of Digital China D-Link, which is very detailed. The previous section describes the basic knowledge of layer-2 switching and layer-3 routing, and then describes the functions of vswitches in detail. In addition, the specification of the vswitch is Chinese, which is also easy for domestic engineers to read. 3Com 4900 Provides CD and printed instruction documents, which are also very detailed. In addition, the website of 3Com can also download all related file information of the vswitch. The Thinker 3800 switch of the creative company we got provides a CD with a Chinese instruction and detailed content.