Running multiple apps on a network switch

If your 10/100 Mbps network is getting saturated because of the many

applications running on it, then you have an option. Determine the segments

generating the traffic and upgrade them to a higher bandwidth of 1000 Mbps, or 1

Gbps. This is mostly required, when running audio/visual or other network

intensive applications. That is where the Gigabit Ethernet switch like this one

from Dax comes in. It’s a 16-port manageable 1000Base-T switch capable of

providing 16 full duplex 1 Gbps LAN connections.

The

front panel of the switch has 16 RJ-45 ports with LEDs indicating active status

of link, link speed, duplex mode and any collision or error. The LEDs are very

useful in knowing the status of a particular port. To manage the switch you have

to use the serial console port with a terminal emulation program like

HyperTerminal, in Windows.

It does not provide management capabilities through Web browser or other

software applications. This is a slight problem as the serial port console based

management is bit tougher than Web or software-based management, especially when

you have to manage several switches together. Also, now most new switches come

with Web or software-based management options or telnet at least.

But the switch offers many desirable features such as VLAN setup, port

mirroring, port aggregation, and QoS (Quality of Service) priority queues based

on information taken from network layer 2 to 4. But the switch, doesn’t

support the Spanning Tree Protocol, which is used to avoid loops in networks

that often lead to broadcast storms. It does however, have built-in broadcast

storm protection functionality.

Coming to performance, we tested the switch with a three-nodes setup with two

systems acting as the data transfer/receive endpoints and the third as the test

console. We used NetIQ Endpoint and IxChariot to determine the throughput. NetIQ

is used to test throughput and response time between the nodes, and the

IxChariot console is used to design and run the tests between the two endpoints

and obtain results.

The systems used were an IBM Dual processor Xeon server, Intel 865GBF

motherboard based P4 3.2 GHz system, and Intel 845PEBT2 motherboard based P4

3.06 system. All systems were equipped with full-duplex Gigabit Ethernet LAN

connections.

First, we measured the data throughput/transfer rates with only one endpoint

sending data to the second endpoint and in the second test both endpoints were

sending data to each other. In the first case, we were able to get maximum

unidirectional throughput of 1000 mbps with an average of about 997 mbps. In the

second case, the combined bi-directional throughput came to about 1500 mbps, as

against the switch’s rated 2 Gbps. We feel that it would be able to achieve

its rated throughput as well, if more powerful nodes are used.