Abstract

Tolly Group Report #202125 (June 2002) measured 3Com’s SuperStack 3 Switch 4226T (24 × Fast Ethernet, 2 × GbE) and SuperStack 3 Switch 4250T (48 × Fast Ethernet, 2 × GbE) under zero-loss bidirectional traffic at 100 % utilization. Both switches delivered 100% of theoretical throughput for 64, 512 and 1,518 byte frames, confirming non-blocking wire-speed forwarding in a full-duplex port-pair setup.

The 4226T pushed 8.8 Gbit/s aggregate bandwidth and the 4250T 13.6 Gbit/s, matching their calculated backplane capacities. Packet-rate tests showed the 4226T handled 6,547,619 fps and the 4250T 10,119,047 fps with 64-byte frames, maintaining 100 % of line rate across all frame sizes.

Despite wire-speed performance, pricing stayed low: the 4226T lists at $995, about $38 per port and roughly 15% cheaper than comparable managed 24-port switches from other vendors.

Take-away: SuperStack 3 Switch 4226T and 4250T provide full wire-speed Layer 2 throughput, high frame rates and competitive per-port cost, making them attractive options for workgroup and edge deployments that need affordable Fast Ethernet access with Gigabit uplinks.