* Forum makes benchmark tests for network processors more comprehensive
The Network Processing Forum this week released benchmark specifications for measuring the performance of network processors.
The industry consortium started laying out its benchmarks in October; this week’s additions extend the benchmarks to include forwarding of IPv6 traffic and beef up the routing tables used in the IP forwarding tests.
The benchmarks provide a way for network equipment makers to evaluate network processors, pitting one against another in standard tests and configurations. Such benchmarks should go a long way toward furthering the cause of network processors in general.
The tests now go beyond IPv4, testing not only 100% native IPv4, but also 100% IPv6 and a 50/50 mix of the two. Plus, they measure how quickly a processor updates forwarding tables.
Interestingly, the forum apparently took great pains to ensure that the routing tables used in the benchmark tests represented “real-world environments.” To that end, the previous specification used a snapshot of the MAE-West route table containing about 30,000 routes. Now a Telstra backbone route table is used, with 120,000 routes. For the IPv6 tests, the routing table from an IPv6 backbone router is included in the tests.
The trick to making benchmarks work, of course, is to have an independent organization run the tests. In this case, the forum names the Tolly Group as a good place to get the tests done. Once the independent tester is through, the Network Processing Forum would deem the product “NPF Certified.”
