Spirent TestCenter Selected to Benchmark Cisco Nexus 7000 Data Center Switch
October 23, 2008
The industry’s largest ever public 10 Gigabit Ethernet test has been successfully completed by Spirent Communications. Sprirent clearly demonstrated it’s leadership in validating and testing the next-generation Ethernet devices by using their TestCenter™ to benchmark the Nexus 7000 data center switch from Cisco.
This test was commissioned by Network World magazine and conducted by industry leading independent test lab, Network Test. Unlike other test products, Spirent provides detailed functional analysis that goes beyond performance testing to quickly identify, isolate and resolve network and system issues early in the development and testing cycle.
“The rapid growth of data centers and 10 Gigabit Ethernet make performance validation a strategic imperative for equipment vendors like Cisco,” said David Newman, president, Network Test, a Network World Test Alliance partner. “Using Spirent TestCenter to assess Cisco’s latest data center switch was a logical choice since the test system provided the necessary scalability, density and flexibility at 10 Gigabit Ethernet rates. What’s more, Spirent TestCenter allowed us to validate both control-plane and data-plane scalability.”
In addition to measuring throughput and latency of unicast and multicast traffic in these tests, Spirent TestCenter also measured high availability and resiliency. These tests examined how the Cisco Nexus switch recovered from an OSPF process restart, how it handled the loss of one or more fabric cards, and how it handled in-service software upgrades and downgrades. Simulating 10 Gigabit Ethernet traffic to 256 ports at line rate speeds, Spirent TestCenter validated the ability of the Cisco Nexus switch to meet the high availability requirements of even the largest data centers.
“In one of the largest public tests of its kind, Spirent continues to demonstrate why it is the preferred network performance analysis system for some of the largest telecom equipment manufacturers and service providers,” said Tim Jefferson, general manager, Converged Core Solutions at Spirent Communications. “Our highly scalable solutions continue to make a difference in helping engineers assess a network’s functionality and performance through a single application.”
Spirent TestCenter, a Layer 2-7 network performance testing platform, is specifically designed for multi-play networks and multi-device technologies. It supports the evolving protocols required for today’s network devices, including IPv4/IPv6 routing, multicast, MPLS, Spanning Tree, VLAN, VLAN stacking and DHCP. It also effectively tests Ethernet switches that are capable of up to 1 Gigabit Ethernet connections to the desktop and 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections to the core. Spirent TestCenter supports the testing of network architectures that include network elements such as Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), high density Ethernet aggregation switches, application acceleration and security devices. For upper layer testing, Spirent TestCenter supports stateful TCP traffic, enabling users to correlate application-layer and lower-layer events on servers and switches.
For more information please visit www.spirent.com/go/STC
Links of interest:
- Ethernet Internet Quotes find out metro ethernet availability
- 10 / 100 Gigabit Ethernet Switches & Routers - National directory of dealers of Nortel, Cisco, 3Com and other switches and routers.
- Ethernet Whitepapers - Collection of 10 gigabit technology whitepapers
- Ethernet News - To get the latest ethernet news by email, Click Here to subscribe.
