Abstract

Tolly Group Report #202108b (April 2002) compares BATM T5 Compact (48 Fast Ethernet, 2 GbE) with Cisco Catalyst 2950G-48 in zero-loss Layer 2 tests using 64, 512 and 1 518-byte frames .

Throughput. T5 Compact forwarded 100% of theoretical bandwidth for every frame size, while Catalyst achieved only 47%–49%. With 64-byte frames T5 processed 10 119 044 fps versus Catalyst’s 4 755 952 fps, delivering more than double Cisco’s rate.

Aggregate capacity. T5 provided 14.8 Gbit/s full-duplex versus Catalyst’s 7.0 Gbit/s, effectively doubling total bandwidth.

Price performance. With a $4 595 list price and 11.1 Mpps at 64 bytes, T5 costs $454 per million pps. Catalyst’s $5 995 price and 4.7 Mpps output yield $1 261 per million pps, so T5 offers 2.75× better price-performance.

Standards and management. Both switches support 802.1Q VLAN tagging, 802.1p priority queuing, 802.3x flow control and SNMP/RMON, but T5’s ASIC architecture sustains wire speed without configuration tuning.

Conclusion: BATM T5 Compact delivers wire-speed forwarding, double Cisco’s throughput and nearly three-times better price-performance, making it a strong choice for cost-sensitive Fast/Gigabit Ethernet edge deployments requiring maximum packet processing without compromise.