Abstract

Rapid City Communications commissioned The Tolly Group to verify the routing performance of its FIRST ƒ1200 Routing Switch. After validating all aspects of test setup, The Tolly Group conducted “live” testing at Rapid City’s booth at Networld + Interop (Las Vegas, NV, 6-8 May 1997). The Rapid City switch was configured to route packets between 60 Full Duplex Fast Ethernet ports. Additionally, the switch carried a live video stream from a server connected to one of the switch’s Gigabit Ethernet ports to a client connected to a 61st Fast Ethernet port. 

The testing showed the ƒ1200 is capable of routing IP packets at rates in excess of 7,000,000 pps among a mesh of 60 Fast Ethernet ports (see Figure 1). The Tolly Group recorded packets per second sent and received on each of the 60 ports. In total, the ƒ1200 forwarded 7,007,811 pps. The performance was consistent over the eight-hour duration of the test. 

Figure 2 shows the rates for all input and output ports. Note that, because the packets are distributed to all output ports, it is possible for the output rate of a given port to exceed the input rate of the same port. 

The ƒ1200’s forwarding performance is consistent whether or not a port is configured as a member of a VLAN. The test configuration consisted of a combination of ports configured either as members of a ten-port VLAN with its own IP subnetwork or as a single port IP subnet. The Tolly Group ensured that all packets were processed at layer 3 by examining the IP TTL (Time-To-Live) fields and modified destination MAC addresses of the packets. See Test Methodology for details on the verification of layer 3 forwarding. 

While processing load from the 60 ports, the ƒ1200 also carried a live video stream originating on a Gigabit Ethernet port and transmitted that stream to a client connected to a 61 Fast Ethernet port. Despite the variable bit rate of the video stream, the high video quality remained consistent.