Abstract

Tolly Group Report #202127 (May 2002) analyzes Redback’s SmartEdge 800 Router equipped with twelve OC-48c line cards. The test methodology required error-free forwarding while engineers saturated Ethernet, POS, ATM and channelized T-3 interfaces.

Packet handling and latency. The chassis forwarded over 70 million packets per second at 40-byte frames, roughly 6 Mpps per OC-48c card, with zero packet loss. Latency stayed low, averaging 50.2 µs for 40-byte packets and 56.2 µs for 1,500-byte packets while operating at 96–100% of line rate across two line cards.

Control-plane and service scale. The router installed more than one million routes (≈500 k BGP, 250 k OSPF, 250 k IS-IS) and forwarded traffic for every prefix. It built 10,000 active MPLS label-switched paths and supported 100,000 multicast subscribers while sustaining 70–80% throughput. BGP convergence ingested 500 k prefixes in 35 s for a single peer, and 1,000 peers exchanged 110 k routes in nine minutes, showing rapid update propagation in large peering environments.

Bottom line: SmartEdge 800 combines 70+ Mpps forwarding, sub-60 µs latency, million-route capacity, five-digit MPLS scale and expansive multicast support with zero packet loss, making it an excellent choice for high-density IP aggregation in Tier-1 service-provider networks.