Abstract

3Com Corp. commissioned The Tolly Group to illustrate that its 3Com Router 6000 router line offers seamless interoperability with Cisco’s WAN router IOS and furthermore that the 3Com Router 6040 provides a more powerful platform than the Cisco 3745 Multiservice Access Router.

To validate the claim that 3Com’s router offerings can interoperate in a heterogeneous network with Cisco devices, The Tolly Group built an interoperability testbed anchored by both routers. Using this environment, engineers validated more than a dozen different interoperability scenarios focused on core routing protocols, key data link protocols and other advanced functions. The Tolly Group also benchmarked the packet throughput of the Router 6040 when routing IP between its LAN interfaces set to 100 Mbps (Fast Ethernet).

Tests showed the 3Com Router 6040 and Router 6080 are interoperable with the Cisco 3745 in every test scenario attempted. Moreover, performance tests show that the 3Com Router 6040 matches the Cisco device packet for packet in the majority of throughput tests, except in 64-byte tests where the 3Com router delivered a 9% higher packet rate. Testing was performed in September 2004. Read the Test Summary