Abstract

3Com Corp. commissioned The Tolly Group to benchmark its SuperStack 3 Switch 4300 versus the Cisco Systems, Inc. Catalyst 3548 XL switch in competitive Layer 2 Fast Ethernet/Gigabit Ethernet forwarding performance tests. The Tolly Group evaluated the steady-state, zero-loss (less than or equal to 0.001%) bidirectional (full-duplex) frames per second (fps) throughput of both switches in a full-mesh configuration. In addition to the standard frame sizes, engineers benchmarked the throughput of both switches when handling Aodd-sized@ frames of 65, 129 and 257 bytes, in order to provide results for the full-spectrum of frame sizes.

The 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4300 was tested with 48 Fast Ethernet ports (100Base-TX) and four Gigabit Ethernet ports (1000Base-SX). The Cisco Catalyst 3548 XL was tested with 48 Fast Ethernet ports (100Base-TX) and two Gigabit Ethernet ports (1000Base-SX). Both devices were configured with 10 Fast Ethernet ports meshed with each Gigabit Ethernet port, and the remainder of the Fast Ethernet ports meshed with each other.

3Com Corp. commissioned The Tolly Group to benchmark its SuperStack 3 Switch 4300 versus the Cisco Systems, Inc. Catalyst 3548 XL switch in competitive Layer 2 Fast Ethernet/Gigabit Ethernet forwarding performance tests. The Tolly Group evaluated the steady state, zero-loss (,0.001%) bidirectional (full-duplex) frames per second (fps) throughput of both switches in a full-mesh configuration. Since some vendors optimize the performance of their switches to handle standard-sized frames, engineers benchmarked the throughput of both switches when handling odd-sized frames of 65, 129 and 257 bytes, in addition to the standard frame sizes, in order to view each switch's performance with the full spectrum of frame sizes.

The 3Com switch: delivered double the aggregate Layer 2 packet through of the Cisco across a variety of frame sizes tested, maintained zero-loss throughput when handling 129- and 257-byte "odd-sized" frames, while the Cisco throughput dropped 33% and 18% respectively in tests using same frame-sizes compared to 128-byte and 256-byte frame rates, offers price/performance that is 2.5 times better than the Catalyst 3548 XL.