Abstract

IBM Corp. commissioned The Tolly Group to test the IP routing through- put of the 2216 Nways Multiaccess Connector Version 1 Release 1.1, and to compare that with Cisco Systems Inc.’s 7507 version 11.1(11) CA (fc1). The test measured application throughput between LAN clients and a mainframe across a pair of Enterprise System Connection (ESCON) channels and eight 16 Mbit/s Token Ring LANs. Testing was performed in July of 1997. 

The tests show that the 2216 delivers more than twice the throughput of the 7507 when routing from mainframe to LAN across two ESCON channels and eight Token Ring LANs. The tests also demonstrate that the 2216 supports both 4K- and 16K-byte IP frame sizes. (The 7507 supports 16K-byte frame sizes on Token Ring but not across the ESCON interface, so this frame size could not be tested on the Cisco product.) 

Results

The tests show that the 2216 delivers an aggregate throughput of 103.6 Mbit/s of application data when routing IP traffic from mainframe to LAN clients across a pair of ESCON channels and onto eight 16 Mbit/s Token Ring LANs using 4K-byte frames. The 2216 also delivered 112.4 Mbit/s of application data with 16K-byte IP frames. These numbers translate to 81% and 88% of the theoretical maximum for the eight Token Ring LANs tested. 

By contrast, the 7507 delivered only 47.6 Mbit/s — less than half that of the 2216 — when routing 4K- byte IP frames when all file transfer sessions were active. The Tolly Group observed that the 7507’s throughput dropped as file transfer streams were added. Figure 1 compares the test results in graphical format. Each test result represents the average of three consecutive test samples. Figure 2 shows the individual test results from which the average was calculated.