Rob Townley schrieb: > > Every time i read these posts they are filled with contradictions in > that one person loves HP and hates CiscoLinksys while another hates > HP. Let's get a more scientific approach. Switch performance still > depends on the NICS in the client machines. Uhm. No. Not any longer, AFAIK. At least, once you leave the SOHO region (AFAIK, the OP wanted >= 48 ports. I don't want to work in such a home-office, really...). Backplane-performance is an issue. Especially with iSCSI. Also, as demonstrated, different switch-vendors offer different feature-sets at different price-levels. There's also the compatibility-question: if you already have a number of devices, the new ones must fit in well into the existing landscape (VLANs etc.pp.) > > Performance data would need to have details such as the NIC on the > client machine and other hw characteristics. How many machines ran > the benchmark simultaneously. Cat5e vs Cat6 or Fiber connected. > That's already more variables in the equation than is healthy for a typical benchmark... > http://www.netperf.org ( OpenSource started by HP, ) > ftp://ftp.netperf.org/netperf/ (Looks like 2.4.4 is the latest > version. Not sure what 4.0.0 is) > > http://sourceforge.net/projects/jnetperf (java version of netperf) > > There may be another project from some Italian Professor, but didn't > find it in my bookmarks. > > Yes, there is the unix way of time dd ... but that wouldn't work for > windows clients and does not give enough details in terms of metrics. > Switch performance is extremely difficult to measure IMO. You need enough clients to make sure you're not accidentally measuring client-performance. In the end, the only thing that counts is real-world data. Netperf et.al. don't really provide a real-world scenario, where you have a mixture of packet-sizes and protocols. Same for artifical load/packet generators (ixia et.al). Because (almost) nobody has the time to do extensive tests, past real-world experience/performance data and word-of-mouth becomes an integral part in choosing such products. That, or you have enough money to buy everything from Cisco ;-) Rainer _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos