Abstract

3Com Corporation commissioned The Tolly Group to demonstrate how application performance can be improved by the new generation of switched 10/100 and Fast Ethernet products. These tests are a follow-on to tests conducted by The Tolly Group in December 1995 examining the increases in network throughput that can be gained from Fast Ethernet and Ethernet switching. For more information on those tests, see Tolly document no. 5279.

Today’s Pentium computers are faster than one could have imagined five years ago, and the same is true of current Ethernet adapters. Combine these advances in desktop technology with the latest bandwidth-hungry Windows applications, and performance on a 10 Mbit/s Ethernet segment can suffer. At only 50 to 60 percent capacity, performance on a 10 Mbit/s Ethernet segment degrades significantly, leaving frustrated network managers looking for answers.

The test results show that the SuperStack II Switch 1000 10/100 Ethernet switch and the SuperStack II Hub 100 Fast Ethernet stackable hub provide network managers with the tools they need to boost application performance and end-user productivity. To demonstrate the productivity increases that can be realized with Ethernet switching and Fast Ethernet, The Tolly Group bench- marked the network performance of some common office applications: Microsoft Excel 5.0, Microsoft Word 6.0 and Microsoft PowerPoint 4.0. File transfer benchmarks were also performed using Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 File Manager.

The test results demonstrate that today’s applications can easily generate enough traffic to congest a traditional shared 10 Mbit/s Ethernet LAN. And when Ethernet segments share a 10 Mbit/s backbone, end users can expect even longer response time. Integrating 10/100 Ethernet switching as well as shared 100 Mbit/s ports into existing Ethernet environments can dramatically improve end-user response time. With 10/100 Ethernet switching, high-use servers can be given dedicated 100 Mbit/s ports, and client contention can be reduced using a combination of dedicated 10 Mbit/s ports and micro-segmentation. Shared 100 Mbit/s Ethernet is another high-performance solution that can boost application performance.