Network Working Group R. Mandeville Request for Comments: 2889 CQOS Inc. Category: Informational J. Perser Spirent Communications August 2000 Benchmarking Methodology for LAN Switching Devices Status of this Memo This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3. Test setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 4. Frame formats and sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5. Benchmarking Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5.1 Fully meshed throughput, frame loss and forwarding rates 4 5.2 Partially meshed one-to-many/many-to-one . . . . . . . . 7 5.3 Partially meshed multiple devices . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 5.4 Partially meshed unidirectional traffic . . . . . . . . . 13 5.5 Congestion Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5.6 Forward Pressure and Maximum Forwarding Rate . . . . . . 19 5.7 Address caching capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 5.8 Address learning rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 5.9 Errored frames filtering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 5.10 Broadcast frame Forwarding and Latency . . . . . . . . . 28 6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 8. Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Appendix A: Formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Appendix B: Generating Offered Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Mandeville & Perser Informational