Cisco WAE 7371 vs. Riverbed Steelhead 6020 competitive lab test results

By Brad Reese on Thu, 01/24/08 - 3:16am.

Finally putting on their boxing gloves, the normally humble, modest and almost always embarrassingly shy Cisco, submitted their WAE 7371 network optimization appliance to Miercom Test Labs for a competitive comparison.

Cisco's opponent?

None other than the Riverbed Steelhead 6020 application acceleration appliance.

Out-of-Path Scalability and Performance Test

The Cisco WAE 7371 sustained over 300 connections/second with up to 50,000 connections with minimal CPU load on the switch in the network.

However, the test results below showed that the Riverbed Steelhead 6020 could only optimize a fraction of the traffic applied under heavy load conditions and consumed more than 90% of the switch's CPU utilization.

In-Line Scalability and Performance Test

The Cisco WAE 7371 passed all in-line scalability tests.

In-Line Scalability and Performance Test

The Riverbed Steelhead 6020 could not achieve the desired load capacity. The device would failover to pass-thru mode for nearly all connections when attempting to sustain 40,000 connections.

File Services and Server Utilization Test

The Cisco WAE 7371 reduced the server network load by 89%.

However, the Riverbed Steelhead 6020 doubled the amount of data required to be generated by the server.

Reliability Analysis Test

The Cisco WAE 7371 tested reliable and exhibited no signs of system instability or system lock up.

However, the Riverbed Steelhead 6020 exhibited multiple repeatable instances of issues that included: system false alert notifications, system instability and system crashes with heavy load.

Of particular concern, when the load applied was removed the Riverbed Steelhead 6020 could not recover by itself, nor resume normal operation without a hard power reboot of the system.

Obviously, the problems exhibited with the Riverbed Steelhead 6020 were very surprising.

Furthermore, they were repeatable despite firmware upgrade and different/multiple hardware platforms!