Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Vendor datasheets

Hello everyone,

Reading vendor datasheets about network equipment have been bothering me for quite a while. For example, I would see a switch rated at 960Gbps switching capacity. Forwarding rate of 720mpps. Im less concerned about the vendors testing methodology on how they reached these numbers but from engineers perpective, these numbers dont tell me anything. A 48 port switch running all interfaces at 10G would make its switching capacity 960 but what does any of this mean when it comes to evaluating a switch? How is a Ciscos 48 port switch different from Junipers. In theory wouldn't any of these two vendors forward at the same rate?

Furthermore what is forwarding rate measuring? Total amount of packets being transmitted if the interface was operating at peak bandwidth? How is that different then from switching capacity?



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