Abstract

3Com Corporation commissioned The Tolly Group to evaluate the Token Ring adapter performance of its solution using the Novell Perform3 benchmarking tool and compare that to the performance of solutions from IBM, Madge Networks and Olicom. Testing was performed in both Novell NetWare 4.11 and a Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 environment.

Specifically, the products tested were: 3Com TokenLink Velocity XL PCI, IBM PCI Token Ring Adapter, Madge Presto PCI, Madge Smart 16/4 PCI Ringnode, and the Olicom PCI/II.

The 3Com adapter delivered the highest native DOS client throughput when handling small frames - up to 2,048 bytes. It offered competitive native DOS client throughput when handling large frames of 4,096 bytes. Its throughput was comparable to four other PCI Token Ring adapters tested in DOS mode on a 32-bit client operating system.