Tolly Data Comm Lab Test - FDDI Bridges & Routers (Plus "Intro to FDDI" Feature Article by Kevin Tolly)
Sponsor: Tolly-Data Communications Magazine
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Document Number: 9308
Publication Date: 8/1/1993
Page Count: 16
Abstract
Lab test of FDDI bridges and routers from: Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), Madge Networks, Proteon, 3Com, Wellfleet Communications.
Products tested:
DEC - DECnis 600 supporting FDDI and Ethernet
Madge - Software product consisting of Madge NICs in a server running Novell’s Multiprotocol Router software supporting FDDI and Token Ring
Proteon - CNX 500 supporting FDDI, Ethernet, and Token Ring
3Com - Linkbuilder 3GH supporting FDDI and Ethernet
3Com - Netbuilder II supporting FDDI, Ethernet, and Token Ring
Wellfleet - Backbone Concentrator Node (BCN) supporting FDDI, Ethernet, and Token Ring.
ADC Fibermux - FX5700 Series Multi-LAN Backbone supporting FDDI and Ethernet. This product was tested but configuration problems prevented testing from being completed before press time
Ten industry leaders were invited, six agreed to participate.
Commentary by Kevin Tolly on 2024-06-03
At this point in the industry, Token Ring LANs ran at 16Mbps and Ethernet LANs were still at 10Mbps. LAN switches did not exist. Most “desktop” LANs were either Token Ring or Ethernet. Token Ring was developed and pushed by IBM, Ethernet was pushed by, basically, everyone else. Token Ring was most common in business environments and Ethernet was used in academic and scientific environments. (Some users were using ArcNet but that was never a major contender for mainstream business desktop LANs.)
The challenge was in connecting LANs via a “backbone” network. It made little sense to connect two 16Mbps LANs through another 16Mbps LAN as the backbone would likely become a bottleneck.
At this time, there were discussions about “Fast Ethernet”, ATM, and SMDS (I can’t even remember what that stands for) being used to provide the higher speed backbone but products were not available. FDDI devices, at this point, had been available for five years and, thus, were ready for deployment in production networks.
The focus of this test was to load the FDDI backbone with as much traffic as possible to determine the actual performance characteristics of the systems.
Test scenarios linked Token Ring to Token Ring via the FDDI backbone or Ethernet to Ethernet via the FDDI backbone device under test.
Tester’s Choice Awards. The Wellfleet BCN was awarded Tester’s Choice for high routing throughput. The 3Com Linkbuilder 3GH was awarded Tester’s Choice for high bridging throughput.
Highlights.
Results: The FDDI backbone was able to handle close to 100Mbps of traffic.
Configuration. Only Wellfleet offered a graphical configuration approach, the rest were all (proprietary) command line configuration. This was before the age of “browser-web” GUIs so this was a proprietary GUI. The test of routing involved significant configuration for the products involved. Routing covered both IP and Novell’s IPX. Recall that, at this time, Novell NetWare was the leading LAN-based server operating environment. IPX was the protocol used by Novell NetWare.
Token Ring Bridging Issues. IBM’s Token Ring used an approach called “source route bridging.” Other vendors did not use this approach so this complicated how the vendors bridged the traffic from Token Ring through FDDI to Token Ring. Some vendors encapsulated the entire Token Ring frame and transported that to the output Token Ring LAN.
Cost. Most of the devices tested had price tags between $25,000 and $50,000.
Testing context. All of these tests were funded by McGraw-Hill’s “Data Communications” Magazine. There was no cost for a vendor to participate. McGraw-Hill editors would decide on which vendors would be invited. Usually, these would be the market leaders. On occasion, start-ups would be invited if there was a particular interesting aspect to their product. They were only required to ship their product to our lab and provide whatever technical support was required to configure devices for the test. That support was either via phone or in-person. At this point in the industry, remote access was not generally available. After the testing was completed, all products were returned to the vendors.
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