 |
Winning company: Cisco
Winning product: Catalyst 4948-10GE
Some of the first tests Network World conducted more than a dozen years ago were on what would now be called very low-end servers and switches - those with only one slow CPU and 10Mbps network connections. Judging by the features of this year's Best of the Test Network Infrastructure winner - Cisco's Catalyst 4948-10GE with its 48 copper Gigabit Ethernet and two 10G Ethernet ports - you can't help but realize that we've all come a long way.
In this stress test conducted by Network World Lab Alliance member David Newman, the Catalyst 4948-10GE came up aces in all configurations. These involved Layer 2 and 3 switching, virtual LANs (VLAN) and Open Shortest Path First routing. The Catalyst 4948-10GE delivered record low latency, hovering in the range of 4 microsec for most frame lengths, and line-rate throughput of as many as 101.19 million frames per second.
Newman commended Cisco on its work in the security arena, too. The box sports standard, competitive security measures such as support for 802.1X user authentication, Secure Shell v2 for remote access and access-control lists. The switch offers many other security features, as well. The port security feature allows the switch to learn the media access control (MAC) addresses of attached hosts, even across reboots, preventing spoofing and boosting reliability. DHCP snooping enables the switch to listen for and reject responses from rogue DHCP servers. The IP source-guard feature builds on DHCP snooping to prevent an attacker from using a legitimate user's IP address to inject spoofed traffic.
Since our test, Cisco has added support for Network Admission Control so that the switch could work with the Cisco-based NAC scheme to lock out or quarantine client machines that do not meet corporate security policy standards.
On tap for the Catalyst 4948-10GE are the addition of Web Cache Communication Protocol v2, a Cisco-developed content-routing technology that enables Layer 3 switches to redirect content requests to appropriate back-end caching engines, and support for the Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol, Cisco says. This protocol allows a group of routers to function as one virtual router by sharing one virtual IP address and one virtual MAC address.
| Start a public discussion with other Network World users on this article (scroll up to send this article to a colleague). Log In | Register for an account (Why you should) |
Note: Register to have your user name appear; otherwise your comment will show up as "Anonymous."
*Anonymous comments will only appear once they are approved by the moderator.
Copyright 2008 Network World Inc.
Cisco adds more carrier Ethernet products
02/21/06
CCIE: Talk about a stress test
02/20/06
Microsoft, Cisco not in sync on security
02/20/06
|
Does Verizon's Voyager stack up to the iPhone? |
5 IT skills that won't boost your salary 
[1,407]
Women 4 times more likely than men to cough up personal info [589]
Japan's 10 funniest tech-related commercials [Videos] [407]
Throwing away a promo CD is "unauthorized distribution"? [1,265]
Adults too quick to dismiss educational video games [682]
Attack of the iPhone clones [Slideshow] [578]
10 things IT needs to know about AJAX [1,258]
This Year's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries [Slideshow] [409]
| The Future Branch Office |
| Getting to Know You: Managing Identity and Network Security |
| Taking Virtualization Up a Notch |
| The Importance of Network Time Synchronization |
| Storage Resource Management |
Gartner has positioned BMC CONTROL-M in the Leaders Quadrant of their "2009 Magic Quadrant for Job Scheduling." The report assesses the ability to execute and completeness of vision of key vendors in the marketplace. Read a full copy today, courtesy of BMC Software.
Read a compelling case study by EMA, Inc. to learn how Dell uses BMC CONTROL-M to cut cost and increase productivity with workload automation.
A major computer manufacturer uses BMC CONTROL-M and just four people to schedule and run over 85,000 jobs every month. By switching to BMC CONTROL-M, they more than quadrupled the workload without adding a single staff member. See how in this 2-minute video overview.
Network World on Twitter: Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news