Gigabit Aggregation Top of Rack Switch Testing

When we released our Enterprise Top of Rack Switch test, we did not expect the amount of feedback we would get.

The feedback included requests that we focus on both enterprise and service providers, along with requests to cover more vendors including Dell, Juniper, Edge-Core, Brocade and host of others.

Hardware To Be Tested

For the Gigabit Aggregation Top of Rack Switch Testing, we are focusing on switches with 40+ Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and two+ 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.

We believe the following are the best representations of products from the above named vendors.

• The Cisco 3750X
• Huawei S5700-52C
• Dell Force10 S50N
• Edge-Core ECS4610-50T
• Brocade ICX 6450-48P

We are happy to take substituions if a vendor believes there is a better product to represent them.

The Testing Will Commence in August.

We plan to spend the month of August testing gigabit aggregation switches.  Based on what hardware arrives we will be testing quite a few vendors and expect that the results will be available in September.

As each vendor sends in their top of rack switch we will (only at their request) be doing a review of the device giving our over all feeling of hardware quality,  ease of configuration and quality of support.

If you are a vendor with a switch that fits the specifications of our test and who would like to be involved, please contact us directly via our info @ routeranalysis.com address.

If you are a customer of or are interested in seeing a specific vendor included please drop us a note and we will do our best to fulfill the request.

The General Test Plan

Our top of rack switch test plan includes the following tests (this is a general list and is not complete):

• Jumbo Frames
• IPv4 and IPv6 Forwarding
• IP Routing (RIP, OSPF, BGP)
• Multicast
• Load Balancing / Redundancy
• STP, RSTP, MSTP
• Vlan Tagging
• QoS
• IGMP v1/2
• SNMP
• MAC Learning
• Packet Filtering
• Store and Forward

We will not focus on features that are proprietary or only supported by a single vendor.

For testing we will use an IXIA with 48GE and two 10GE ports.  On the IXIA chasis we will run the latest versions of IxLoad, IxAutomate and IxNetwork as supported by IXIA.

All configurations will be built by us and checked by the vendors of the equipment.

While testing, any issues that come up will be escalated to the vendor and if a fix is available it will be deployed.

In the event of any issues with a vendor being unable to complete the test, not agreeing with the test results, or any other issues the vendors will be allowed to drop out and will not be named.

We believe this is a fair test that is beneficial to both customers and vendors.