Network Working Group R. Mandeville
Request for Comments: 2285 European Network Laboratories
Category: Informational February 1998
Benchmarking Terminology for LAN Switching Devices
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Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Existing definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Term definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1 Devices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1.1 Device under test (DUT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1.2 System under test (SUT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2 Traffic orientation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2.1 Unidirectional traffic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2.2 Bidirectional traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3 Traffic distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3.1 Non-meshed traffic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3.2 Partially meshed traffic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3.3 Fully meshed traffic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.4 Bursts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4.1 Burst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4.2 Burst size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.4.3 Inter-burst gap (IBG). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.5 Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.5.1 Intended load (Iload) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.5.2 Offered load (Oload) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.5.3 Maximum offered load (MOL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.5.4 Overloading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.6 Forwarding rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.6.1 Forwarding rate (FR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.6.2 Forwarding rate at maximum offered load (FRMOL). . . . 16
3.6.3 Maximum forwarding rate (MFR). . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.7 Congestion control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.7.1 Backpressure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.7.2 Forward pressure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Mandeville Informational