InformationWeek

We also looked at the management interface of the switches. It's instructive to note the differences in how long it took the company engineers to set up their own products using the interfaces. The products with really good graphical user interfaces were notably easier to set up and verify configurations during troubleshooting.

The issue of the command line interface vs. graphical interface is one that has come up repeatedly. Many vendors say customers request CLI functionality first and GUI functionality only as a secondary tool. However, I have to assume that these customers are trained engineers who want to keep their jobs, rather than IT managers concerned with being able to easily get new hires up to speed on network-management tasks. Given current IT staffing shortages, it seems clear that network equipment vendors with accessible interfaces that don't require a week of training will offer a clear advantage.

Once we had the test bed set up, we installed the actual switches. We tested the Lucent four-slot chassis Cajun P550 switches. The two core switches were configured with both gigabit fiber and gigabit copper blades, while the edge switches were configured with one gigabit uplink plus the 10/100 ports. The copper gigabit blades were prototypes based on the existing fiber gigabit blades, with two ports per blade. Production blades will have eight or 12 ports per blade, similar to the 10/100 blades.

Regardless of the prototype nature of the boards, they worked well. The switches were simple to set up, and the problems we did have all seemed to be related to the configuration of other devices on the network, rather than the Cajun switches. The Cajun is exemplary in its management interface, both the internal Web-based administrative consoles, and the separate CajunView suite, which provides enterprisewide management. The ease of management was in marked contrast to the CLI approach of the past. Administrative changes were easy, even changes that were rolled out to multiple switches.

The Cajun switch passed all of our tests with low percentages of packets dropped, as might be expected. This is a mature product, and the only difference between the gigabit fiber blades and the gigabit copper blades is the interface. The Cajun offers full Layer 2/3/4 functionality, including virtual LAN functionality, and something relatively unusual these days: Novell IPX routing as well as TCP/IP.

Latency was relatively high on the Cajun, at least compared with the other two products we tested. It would be unlikely to have any effect in a production environment, although network managers with requirements for interactive video or voice over IP would be wise to do some testing before buying a large number of switches. The Cajuns might be a little more expensive than other products, but in large network environments, the superb management interface and CajunView software make them a good deal.

We tested four Intel 480T Gigabit Routing switches. All had 10/100 and gigabit copper ports; they were actually late beta units but appeared to be production units in fit and finish, and were functionally identical to the units that will ship. The 480T features 12 10/100/1,000 copper ports and four gigabit ports that can be optical fiber or twisted pair.

The 480T supports all of the functionality we needed, including Layer 2/3/4 routing, virtual LANs, and quality of service, which lets administrators prioritize transmissions. The browser-based management interface was complete and usable, and Intel has obviously made a GUI interface a priority-there was never a need to resort to the CLI to make configuration changes.

The tests went well, showing a very low percentage of packets dropped and extremely low latency. These switches would be a great fit for any real-time applications such as voice over IP or teleconferencing.

We also installed Alteon gigabit switches. It could easily be argued that the Alteon ACE 180 had no place in the tests, since it's a 12-port switch with a choice of either 10/100 twisted pair or gigabit fiber on each port. Indeed, the only reason we tested it was that we had so many other vendors renege on their commitments to provide products, and the ACE 180 will soon be available with gigabit copper ports.

The switch wasn't tested with the same suite as the other products. We had only two of them, and not enough ports for all the tests. The ACE 180 isn't marketed as a standard backbone or edge switch. It's a Layer 4/Layer 7 switch used primarily for its capabilities as a load balancer and firewall. Testing those features isn't as easy as testing the capacity of a switch in packets per second.

On the standard tests we were able to run, the ACE 180 showed minimal packet loss and very low latency. It also had a new feature, which is available to existing customers as a software upgrade. The feature, called the Virtual Matrix, provides substantial performance gains. The switch uses two application-specific integrated circuits per port, and dedicated memory for each port.