Evaluating a Catalyst 6500 at 320 Gbps
I've often wondered how networking equipment manufactures set about testing the throughput of their gear under various conditions. Today on cisco-nsp someone referenced this analysis (PDF link) of a Catalyst 6509 with a Sup720 and eight WS-X6704-10GE modules. That's a total of 32 10Gig Ethernet interfaces.
Tests performed include:
- Single card maximum forwarding rate
- L3 switching latency
- L2 maximum forwarding rate
- IPv4 and IPv6 maximum forwarding rate (with and without applied services)
The evaluation was conducted by the European Advanced Networking Test Center, and the strategies they used provide great insight to the inner-workings of the 6500 platform. Overall the 6500 performed exceptionally, but what really interests me is the gear and logic used to stress performance. The equipment used in this instance was a cluster of Spirent SmartBits traffic analyzers. Not exactly cheap, but still very cool.
About the Author
Jeremy Stretch is a freelance networking engineer, instructor, and the maintainer of PacketLife.net. He currently lives in Fairfax, Virginia, on the edge of the Washington, DC metro area. Although primarily an R&S guy, he likes to get into everything, and runs a free network training lab out of his basement for fun. You can contact him by email or follow him on Twitter.
You know, if they install VSS1440 and a second chassis they could double it.