3Com Corp. commissioned The Tolly Group to measure the Ethernet and Fast Ethernet switching and routing throughput of the 3Com CoreBuilder 3500. The Tolly Group bench- marked the performance of the switch in full- duplex mode when outfitted with its maximum 24 10/100 Fast Ethernet ports (four, six-port 100BASE-TX modules). Tests were performed with the following four traffic types: Layer 2 switching, Layer 3 IP routing, Layer 3 IPX routing, and simultaneous Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 IP routing. Seven packet sizes, ranging from 64-bytes to 1,518-bytes, were tested for each traffic type. All tests were run with ports set at 10 Mbit/s and then at 100 Mbit/s, resulting in 56 tests total.

Results show that the CoreBuilder 3500 delivers wire-speed throughput, simultaneously over 24 full-duplex ports, whether switching, routing IP or IPX, or handling combined switched and routed traffic. Furthermore, the switch achieves theoretical maximum system throughput, with- out packet loss on any port.