Benchmarking Terminology for LAN Switching Devices
RFC 2285
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RFC - Informational
(February 1998; No errata)
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RFC 2285 (Informational)
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Network Working Group R. Mandeville
Request for Comments: 2285 European Network Laboratories
Category: Informational February 1998
Benchmarking Terminology for LAN Switching Devices
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Existing definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Term definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1 Devices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1.1 Device under test (DUT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1.2 System under test (SUT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2 Traffic orientation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2.1 Unidirectional traffic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2.2 Bidirectional traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3 Traffic distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3.1 Non-meshed traffic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3.2 Partially meshed traffic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3.3 Fully meshed traffic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.4 Bursts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4.1 Burst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4.2 Burst size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.4.3 Inter-burst gap (IBG). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.5 Loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.5.1 Intended load (Iload) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.5.2 Offered load (Oload) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.5.3 Maximum offered load (MOL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.5.4 Overloading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.6 Forwarding rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.6.1 Forwarding rate (FR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.6.2 Forwarding rate at maximum offered load (FRMOL). . . . 16
3.6.3 Maximum forwarding rate (MFR). . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.7 Congestion control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.7.1 Backpressure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.7.2 Forward pressure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Mandeville Informational [Page 1]
RFC 2285 Benchmarking Terminology February 1998
3.7.3 Head of line blocking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.8 Address handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.8.1 Address caching capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.8.2 Address learning rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.8.3 Flood count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.9 Errored frame filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.9.1 Errored frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.10 Broadcasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.10.1 Broadcast forwarding rate at maximum load . . . . . . 22
3.10.2 Broadcast latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5. References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6. Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7. Author's Address. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
8. Full Copyright Statement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1. Introduction
This document is intended to provide terminology for the benchmarking
of local area network (LAN) switching devices. It extends the
terminology already defined for benchmarking network interconnect
devices in RFCs 1242 and 1944 to switching devices.
Although it might be found useful to apply some of the terms defined
here to a broader range of network interconnect devices, this RFC
primarily deals with devices which switch frames at the Medium Access
Control (MAC) layer. It defines terms in relation to the traffic put
to use when benchmarking switching devices, forwarding performance,
congestion control, latency, address handling and filtering.
2. Existing definitions
RFC 1242 "Benchmarking Terminology for Network Interconnect Devices"
should be consulted before attempting to make use of this document.
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