Abstract

Accton Technology commissioned The Tolly Group to perform a comparison of key features of the Commpass EZrouter vs. the Cisco 2500 branch office router. The test included comparison of router performance (both with and without compression), interoperability tests, and an ease-of-use evaluation.

Results show that the Commpass EZrouter delivers equivalent performance to the Cisco 2500 in tests of raw throughput across high-speed (T1), leased lines. In data compression tests, the Commpass EZrouter outperformed the Cisco 2500 by up to 18.5%. Additionally, the Commpass EZrouter demonstrated ease-of-use advantages over the Cisco 2500. The Tolly Group also verified that the Commpass EZrouter is interoperable with the Cisco 2500 in a number of common scenarios.

Tolly Group Report #5291 (December 1995) compares Accton’s Commpass EZrouter with the Cisco 2500 for performance, compression, interoperability, and ease of use .

Throughput on T1 links. In bidirectional tests the EZrouter delivered 2.57 Mbit/s with 64-byte frames and 3.07 Mbit/s with 1,500-byte frames, saturating the full-duplex link and matching Cisco’s results; unidirectional tests also showed equivalent wire-rate forwarding across IP and IPX traffic .

WAN compression advantage. On 128 Kbit/s LAPB links the EZrouter achieved 2.43:1 compression for both IP and IPX versus Cisco’s 2.08:1 and 2.05:1; at 64 Kbit/s the EZrouter again reached 2.43:1 while Cisco measured 2.18:1 (IP) and 2.04:1 (IPX) .

Interoperability. The EZrouter interoperated with Cisco across PPP at 64 Kbit/s, 128 Kbit/s, and T1, routing IP on Class C networks and subnets and IPX using Ethernet II, 802.3, and SNAP framing without errors or session failures .

Ease of use. The EZrouter auto-detects WAN link type and speed, auto-enables the LAN port, supports menu-based setup and Telnet access, and can auto-load code and configuration from a boot server; Cisco lacks several of these conveniences in this generation .

Bottom line. Commpass EZrouter matches Cisco 2500 on raw T1 forwarding, delivers stronger compression on low-speed links, interoperates cleanly, and simplifies installation and management, making it a capable and user-friendly branch-office router option .