Abstract

Tolly Group Report #202154 (November 2002) benchmarked the Enterasys XSR-1805 Security Router against Cisco’s 1751 Modular Access Router in a LAN-to-LAN lab designed to tax processing power under three conditions: baseline Layer-3 forwarding, QoS inspection, and ACL filtering. Tests demanded zero-loss delivery (≤0.001% packet loss) on full-duplex 10/100 Mb/s links while sweeping packet sizes from 64 to 1,518 bytes.

Baseline throughput. At 10 Mb/s with 64-byte frames the XSR-1805 forwarded 29,762 pps versus Cisco’s 23,880 pps and sustained 100% of theoretical bandwidth, while the 1751 managed only 80%.

Impact of security features. With QoS enabled the XSR-1805 still delivered 29,762 pps at 64 bytes and 9,058 pps at 256 bytes, dwarfing Cisco’s 11,904 pps and 8,775 pps respectively. When 10 bidirectional ACL rules were active it maintained 91% of line rate versus Cisco’s 75%. These results show that the XSR-1805 provides wire-speed forwarding even with policy features engaged, giving branch offices high bandwidth without sacrificing enforcement capacity.