While HP buys its 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches from Foundry, the two boxes do not have exactly the same performance or features.
For example, in tests with four interfaces, Foundry's FastIron switch delivered throughput with 256- and 1,518-byte frames that was only about 5.5G and 5G bit/sec, respectively, or only about 50% of line speed.
The HP's ProCurve Routing Switch 9300m series switch achieved throughput close to 8G bit/sec per interface for all frame lengths, even though Foundry manufactures both vendors' switches.
One possible explanation is that Foundry and HP supplied different software versions for testing. Given HP's higher throughput, some performance issue with the software image could explain the difference.
When it came to testing for delay, the HP box did an excellent job of keeping delay to a minimum.
For voice-over-IP or video applications, jitter is even more critical a metric than delay. Our jitter measurements showed that the switch from HP recorded negligible amounts of jitter, as low as 100 nanosec, the minimum our test instruments could record.
In our backbone testing, HP came in right up against the 8G bit/sec limit of its switch fabric. And again, switches from Foundry and HP did the best job of keeping average delay and jitter to low levels across all frame lengths.
Finally, when we tested failover, the HP box recorded a failover speed of 313 millsec., which was very fast.
For the full report, go to http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2003/020310gbe.html