Abstract

3Com Corporation commissioned The 􏰄Tolly Group to evaluate the performance of the 3Com SuperStack II Switch 2000 TR and compare it to the perfo mance of the Madge Smart Ringswitch. The frame-processing capabilities and frame latency of the switches were tested in store-and-forward and cut-through mode. The Flow Control feature of the Switch 2000 TR was also evaluated.

Test Results
The test results demonstrate that the 3Com SuperStack II Switch 2000 TR delivers high throughput at all frame sizes tested. The Switch 2000 TR also has lower cut-through latency than Madge at all frame sizes tested. In addition to support for source route bridging, the SuperStack II Switch 2000 TR also provides support for transparent bridging environments. Madge Smart Ringswitch (version 1.18.00) does not support transparent bridging. The 3Com Switch 2000 TR’s flexibility and high performance comes at a significantly lower per-port cost than the Madge Smart Ringswitch. Further tests on the SuperStack II Switch 2000 TR demonstrated that the Flow Control feature can substantially reduce the number of input frames lost when an output port is oversubscribed.