Abstract

Plaintree Systems Inc. commissioned The Tolly Group to quantify the Fast Ethernet switching performance of its WaveSwitch 9200 Gigabit Backbone Switch. The Tolly Group conducted steady state throughput testing of 128 Full Duplex Fast Ethernet ports. Performance of half duplex Fast Ethernet switch ports under traffic loading conditions and key operational characteristics of the WaveSwitch 9200 were also tested. Testing was performed in June and July of 1997. 

Test results show that the WaveSwitch 9200 can forward an aggregate throughput in excess of nineteen million frames per second in a mesh configuration of 128 full duplex Fast Ethernet ports (see figure 1). The WaveSwitch 9200 was able to forward 148,800 64-byte frames per second in- bound and outbound on each of 128 ports in a steady-state configuration. 

The wire-speed throughput performance demonstrated by the WaveSwitch 9200 is notable because of the method used to test it. The WaveSwitch 9200 was tested with each port generating to every other port on the switch. This is a rigorous test of the inter-module backplane switching capacity. Traffic from each port was forwarded across the backplane to each module from every port as well as to ports on the same module. The Wave-Switch 9200 demonstrated wire-speed throughput in this meshed configuration with no packet loss at the highest possible frame rate.