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Ethernet switch vendors hawk their wares with bold promises of increased bandwidth. But the true test of their worth is whether they can relieve congestion and saturation. To separate the myth from reality, we brought several switches into the lab and tested their performance. In this first installment of a continuing series of switch reviews, we looked at the Alantec Corp. PowerHub 3000, the Kalpana, Inc. EtherSwitch BPS-2015 and the LANNET, Inc. MultiNet.
As it turns out, making apples-to-apples comparisons of Ethernet switches is not a straightforward task. No two switches, it seems, are alike. Some high-end switches, for instance, include routing capability, while other switches offer full-duplex capability. We chose three switches that are based on different architectures and targeted at different markets.
We did, however, apply one particular criterion to our selections. We decided to limit our interest to products with individually switched ports in order to get a more accurate assessment of their performance capabilities. We excluded switches that assigned groups of ports to one Ethernet segment or bus.
What we found was that when used appropriately, these switches are a bandwidth boon for congested networks. The decision to use any one of these three switches will ultimately depend on the network environment and its needs. The Alantec PowerHub, for instance, is best suited for backbone or enterprise switching tasks. With built-in routing capability for all ports, it's a-good solution for collapsed backbone applications.
Our tests also showed that LANNET's MultiNet is ideal for backbone and intra-workgroup switching needs. It exhibited low packet-forwarding overhead, allowing it to handle multimedia environments.
Kalpana's EPS-2015, the least expensive of the three switches, displays the lowest delay times (latency) and is adept at switching individual stations in a workgroup setting. It also offers full-duplex capability for all its switch ports.
SETTING THE STAGE
The Alantec PowerHub, a store-and-forward switching hub, supports 12 half-duplex Ethernet segments, as well as integrated bridging, virtual local-area network and multiprotocol routing over each Ethernet segment. It also offers optional Fiber Distributed Data Interface modules. In fact, the PowerHub is really a combination bridge, router and hub in one box. Our PowerHub test configuration supported 12 attachment unit interface (AUI) connections, but other configurations are available that support as many as 76...