Abstract

Enterasys XSR-1805 VPN throughput evaluation (Tolly Group Report #202156, November 2002)

Tolly engineers created LAN-to-LAN IPsec tunnels (3DES + MD5) between pairs of routers and measured zero-loss (≤0.001% packet loss) bidirectional throughput across 10/100 Mb/s links to expose each platform’s raw encryption horsepower. Enterasys commissioned the study to compare its XSR-1805 branch-office security router with Cisco’s 1751 and 2651XM under identical traffic generators, packet-size sweeps (64–1,420 B) and hardware settings.

Fast-Ethernet (100 Mb/s) results. Against Cisco’s 2651XM the XSR-1805 moved 7.8 Mb/s vs 1.6 Mb/s for 64-byte frames, 56.9 Mb/s vs 8.3 Mb/s for 512-byte frames, and a peak 121.7 Mb/s vs 15.8 Mb/s for 1,420-byte frames—an advantage ranging from four to more than seven times the competitor’s throughput. The headline figure, “seven-times more zero-loss throughput,” comes from that largest-packet test, where the Enterasys box effectively saturated Fast Ethernet while encrypting every packet.

Ethernet (10 Mb/s) results and overall take-aways. In a 10 Mb/s scenario the XSR-1805 still forwarded 8.0 Mb/s at 64 bytes versus the Cisco 1751’s 1.8 Mb/s, and remained ahead across all larger packet sizes (e.g., 19.4 Mb/s vs 14.9 Mb/s at 1,420 bytes). Thanks to its hardware encryption accelerator, the XSR-1805 sustains near-wire-speed VPN throughput while Cisco’s routers fall well short, making Enterasys the better fit for branch offices that need high-performance IPsec without sacrificing link capacity.