Current Methodologies
Welcome to Network Test, your one-stop shop for evaluating high-end networking products and services.
This page offers results from a sampling of groundbreaking lab tests, all stress-testing the products and services you're considering to see how they'll stand up on today's networks—and tomorrow's.
Network Test also conducts private evaluations for service provider and enterprise clients. The company's public tests appear in publications like Light Reading, Network World, Network Computing, and CommWeb. Results are posted as they become available.
This is also the place where you can review current and future test methodologies.
Network World Clear Choice Test: Cisco FabricPath
Network World
October 25, 2013
We assessed FabricPath, Cisco's pre-standard take on the IETF's forthcoming TRILL specification, in terms of its ability to boost bandwidth, reroute around trouble, and simplify network management. In all three areas, FabricPath delivered: We saw real improvement over designs based around the venerable spanning tree specification.
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Network World Clear Choice Test: Netgear ReadyNAS 3100
Network World
September 27, 2013
Netgear's ReadyNAS appliances offer a simple and effective way to get started with network-attached storage (NAS). The ReadyNAS 3100 we evaluated in this Clear Choice test was a snap to set up, and it proved a capable performer in our NFS and iSCSI tests.
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Network World Clear Choice Test: Cisco Catalyst 3750-X
Network World
July 26, 2013
Buy less equipment, use less power: That's a proposition network managers can get behind, and it's what Cisco promises with the new power management features in its Catalyst 3750-X stackable access switch. As this exclusive Clear Choice test demonstrates, Cisco makes good on that promise with StackPower, a means of pooling power among switches in a stack. Testing validated that StackPower can cut both capital and operational costs.
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Network World Clear Choice Test: 10G Top-of-Rack Data Center Switches
Network World
January 18, 2013
As data center managers consolidate and virtualize their servers, the next order of business becomes moving all that traffic. Enter top-of-rack data center switches that offer speed, scalability, redundancy, virtualization support and other features not available in garden-variety Ethernet switches. This test analyzes switches, each sporting at least 24 10Gigabit interfaces, from Arista Networks, Blade Network Technologies, Cisco, Dell, Extreme and HP ProCurve. We compared these products 10 different ways and subjected them to three months of grueling performance tests.
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Network World Clear Choice Test: HP TMS security blade
Network World
October 5, 2009
HP has an alternative to the many security appliances that combine firewall, intrusion prevention and VPN functions: Just put a single blade in the vendor's ProCurve switch and be done with it. In this exclusive Clear Choice test, we assessed the HP ProCurve Threat Management Services zl module (TMS) in terms of its features, usability and performance.
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Network World Clear Choice Test: 3Com S7906E/H3C S7506E switch
Network World
April 20, 2009
3Com says it has an alternative for network managers considering high-end switches from Cisco and others. Our exclusive Clear Choice test of its new core switch backs up 3Com's claim. This chassis-based, 288-port device delivered line-rate throughput in all performance tests, supported more Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing sessions than we've ever set up and consumed remarkably little power all the while.
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Network World Clear Choice Test: Juniper SRX 5800 firewall
Network World
February 23, 2009
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If the Guinness Book of World Records had an entry for "biggest firewall ever," Juniper's new SRX 5800 would certainly qualify. In this exclusive test, this hulking brute of a machine sped traffic at rates approaching 140 Gbit/s through its 16 10-gigabit Ethernet interfaces, making it by far the largest and fastest firewall anyone has ever tested.
Network World Clear Choice Test: Cisco ASR 1000 router
Network World
January 12, 2009
With enterprises looking to consolidate data centers and devices, Cisco's new ASR 1000 series router offers a compelling message: Do more with less. In an exclusive Clear Choice test, the ASR not only moved traffic at 20Gbps but also did so while running QoS, security and monitoring functions on 120 million flows from hundreds of concurrent routing sessions.
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Network World Clear Choice Test: 802.11n for the Enterprise
Network World
October 24, 2008
With the latest version of Wi-Fi promising vastly higher data rates compared with previous incarnations, a couple of laptops running a few FTP sessions through a single access point won't do. Instead, Network Test set up the largest public 802.11n test ever conducted. We invited all enterprise Wi-Fi vendors to supply not one but eight 802.11n access points, along with controllers if needed. Working with test instrument vendor VeriWave, we crafted test traffic from hundreds (and in some cases thousands) of virtual clients to see just how high the new 802.11n systems would scale, both in pure 802.11n settings and also with a mix of 802.11n and legacy clients. In all these tests, the goal was to determine 802.11n performance in an enterprise context.
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Network World Clear Choice Test: Cisco Nexus 7010
Network World
September 1, 2008
In the largest-ever test ever conducted by Network Test or by Cisco -- 256 10G Ethernet ports -- Cisco's new data-center switch shows excellent features and high availability but only middling performance due to a bottleneck in its line cards.
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Network World Clear Choice Test: Juniper EX 4200
Network World
July 14, 2008
With the introduction of its EX switch line, Juniper offers a credible alternative in enterprise access switching.
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10-Gigabit Access Switches
Network World
March 24, 2008
There's a new generation of access switches around, and they go far beyond the simple L2/L3 forwarding functions of the switches they replace. In addition to 10-gigabit uplinks, the new switches also sport security and multicast capabilities not present in previous-generation products. This 10-part methodology represents one of the most rigorous public assessment of switch technology in recent years.
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Network World Clear Choice Test: Cisco Virtual Switching
Network World
January 7, 2008
In an exclusive Clear Choice test of Cisco's new Virtual Switching System (VSS), Network World conducted its largest-ever benchmarks to date, using a mammoth test bed with 130 10G Ethernet interfaces. The results: record throughput of 770 million packets per second, 20x reductions in failover times, and a virtualization scheme that makes two Catalyst 6500s look like a single logical switch.
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Network World Clear Choice Test: WAN Acceleration
Network World
August 13, 2007
Using a massive test bed that modeled an organization with branch offices across the USA, we pounded four vendors' application acceleration devices with the most popular enterprise applications. The results were very positive: Acceleration devices provide huge reductions in WAN bandwidth and response time.
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Enterprise Wi-Fi Scalabilty
Network World
November 6, 2006
The largest public Wi-Fi test we've ever conducted used more than two dozen access points and multiple switch/controllers from each vendor. Scaling up performance like this is the real acid test when it comes to assessing suitability of Wi-Fi equipment for enterprise deployment.
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Wideband managed Ethernet switch
Network World
October 23, 2006
Network managers driven by frugality, patriotism or both, might want to consider the WideBand WB28GMPRO, a low-cost managed Gigabit Ethernet switch made in the American heartland.
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High-End Intrusion Prevention Devices
Network World
September 11, 2006
Scan the marketing literature for enterprise-class intrusion prevention systems and you're likely to see claims of gigabit-plus performance. The only problem, as one vendor's CTO acknowledged, is that high performance claims often are obtained "downhill, with the wind at our backs." As this groundbreaking test shows, forwarding rates fall and response times rise when IPSs get hit with even a little attack traffic. What's worse, some IPSs miss even well-known attacks altogether.
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Web Front-End Acceleration Devices
Network World
January 16, 2006
There's a new way to boost data-center performance: the Web front-end accelerator. These devices go well beyond conventional L4-L7 load balancers with a raft of new functions, including L7 content switching, connection multiplexing, and HTTP compression.
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Sun N2120V
Network World
October 3, 2005
Sun has entered the crowded content-switching market with a novel twist: Its Sun Secure Application Switch N2120V lets users define multiple switching and routing domains on a single box.
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PoE: Powerful Stuff
LabRat Magazine
Ethernet’s enduring beauty is that it keeps getting enhanced with simple, useful, inexpensive new features. Power over Ethernet (PoE) is a perfect example: it transmits power over conventional twisted-pair copper cabling to Ethernet devices like IP phones, WLAN access points, and Web cameras.
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Catalyst 4948-10GE
Network World
September 5, 2005
Cisco's Catalyst 4948-10GE delivered record low latency and line-rate throughput. Coupled with innovative security mechanisms and an extensive list of switching and routing features, this switch earned Network World's Clear Choice award.
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VoIP Testing Made Difficult
LabRat Magazine
March 29, 2005
VoIP assessment represents a brave new world for data and telephony test staff alike. A major challenge for both groups is coming to understand each other's protocols. IP networking veterans need to get up to speed with telephony terminology and protocols like H.323 and SIP. On the voice side, telephony testing professionals may not fully understand the impact of packetizing voice traffic, especially when it's routed over complex IP networks.
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Voice Over Wireless LANs
Network World
January 10, 2005
VoIP should be an easy fit for wireless LANs, but mixing the two technologies today is difficult. Despite VoIP's low-bandwidth profile, even a small amount of data traffic on the same network can lead to seriously degraded audio quality and dropped calls – and that's with QoS features enabled.
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Adtran 4305
Network World
November 22, 2004
As long as Cisco leads the router market, competitors will continue to come up with differentiators. With Adtran's new NetVanta 4305 access router, the differentiators are price, price, price.
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Nortel Contivity
Network World
October 11, 2004
We measured the Nortel SSL VPN Module 1000 running inside the Contivity 1740 against three performance metrics: SSL tunnel setup/teardown rate (see glossary of SSL terminology), maximum concurrent users and forwarding rate.
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Extreme Summit 400-48t
Network World
September 6, 2004
Enabling gigabit to the desktop - or to lots of desktops - is the name of the game for Extreme Networks' new Summit 400-48t, a 10G Ethernet workgroup switch.
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Foundry MG8
Network World
March 1, 2004
With its new “Mucho Grande” enterprise backbone switch/router, Foundry Networks joins an elite group of vendors that deliver true 10-gigabit throughput. The MG8 also delivers stellar numbers when it comes to delay, jitter, and QOS enforcement. However, results from our failover tests raise resiliency concerns, and firmware for a new 40-port gigabit Ethernet card still has some kinks to be worked out.
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SSL-Based VPN Gateways
Light Reading
December 9, 2003
The big buzzword in VPNs these days is around Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), a technology that enables remote access to the enterprise from virtually any Web browser. As with any new market, there also are big differences among products. For this largest-ever survey of SSL VPN gateways, we've devised a new performance methodology that stresses these devices with the number one application they're used with – Outlook Web Access, the Webified front end for Microsoft's popular email client. The results suggest there's plenty of work to be done in boosting performance.
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Cisco Catalyst 6500
Network World
October 20, 2003
Cisco takes up Network World's standing offer to rerun the 10-Gigabit Ethernet switch tests first published in early 2003. Cisco may be a relatively latecomer to true 10-Gigabit switching, but it catches up in a big way. New 10-Gigabit interfaces for the Catalyst 65xx switches not only ace the previous tests, but also scale to impressive heights when using Cisco's new OSPFv3 IPv6 routing protocol.
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Wireless LAN Switches
Network World
September 22, 2003
Enterprises are beginning to implementin wireless LANs (WLANs) on a large scale, and that poses new challenges when it comes to provisioning, management, performance, and security. This groundbreaking survey examines how well the new crop of WLAN switches handle all these areas. This test includes the first-ever public measurements of WLAN latency, with high numbers suggesting that QOS capabilities will be necessary to roll out voice applications over wireless nets.
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Filtering on Routers: The Price of Performance
Network World
July 14, 2003
It's always a good practice to enable access control lists (ACLs) on routers for security's sake, but doing so may exact severe performance policies. This comparison of six branch-office routers reveals serious performance issues with the default configuration of Cisco's best-selling IOS. Meanwhile, other devices handle numerous ACLs with no performance penalty.
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Watchguard V200 firewall/VPN gateway
Network World
April 24, 2003
The RapidStream division of Watchguard unveils a new high-end VPN gateway. It scales to support more than 40,000 concurrent users, but other performance measurements aren't quite as stellar.
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3Com XRN Stackable Switch
Network World
March 3, 2003
3Com gets back into the enterprise with a new line of stackable switches.
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10-Gigabit Enterprise Switch/Routers
Network World
February 3, 2003
Pay for 10 Gbit/s, get 8 Gbit/s? That seems to be the message most vendors of enterprise backbone switches are peddling. On the plus side, even first-generation 10-Gbit/s switches work far better than earlier switches using link aggregation when it comes to breaking up bandwidth bottlenecks.
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ISP Backbones
Network World
December 16, 2002
It's time to lay to rest the notion that ISPs can't deliver telco-grade levels of availability and performance. This groundbreaking study took direct measurements on seven ISPs' backbones for a 30-day period. The result? Some turned in virtually flawless results.
Metro Edge Routers
Light Reading
December 6, 2002
For network operators, the path back to profitability is paved with services – everything from QOS enforcement to multiple kinds of MPLS VPNs to multiple routing instances on one box. We put all these features and much more to the test on the new breed of metro edge routers.
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Carrier-Class IPSec: The Bigger The Better
Light Reading
June 5, 2002
Managed security services are hot right now, and carriers have plenty of products to choose from. So which boxes are best for building scaleable, managed VPN services?
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Two Gigabits, One Vendor
Light Reading
January 17, 2002
At least five Fibre Channel vendors say they have switches based on the new 2-Gbit/s specification, but only Qlogic puts one up to test. The good news: Performance is excellent.
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Enterasys Goes Its Own Way -- Fast
Network World
November 19, 2001
A new 10-Gbit/s layer-2 switch from Enterasys offers line-rate throughput and impressively low latency, but its 10-Gbit/s interfaces are proprietary. The vendor pledges it will soon issue modular upgrades that comply with the IEEE's forthcoming 10-Gbit/s Ethernet standard.
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The Trouble With Trunking
Network World
April 16, 2001
High-end switch/routers are blazingly fast, especially when equipped exclusively with gigabit Ethernet interfaces. But enabling a feature called link aggregation can cause throughput to tank, latency to leap, failover to falter and quality of service to quit.
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The Internet Core Router Test
Light Reading
March 12, 2001
Four vendors, 12 OC-192c interfaces, 48 OC-48c interfaces, 200,000 prefixes, and a whole lotta bits in the pipe. Which vendor's router is best for service at the core of today's Internet, and tomorrow's?
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IPSec VPNs: How Safe? How Speedy?
CommWeb
September 12, 2000
There are many choices when it comes to building a VPN to link corporate offices. Dozens of vendors stand ready with virtual private network gateways, each promising easy management, speedy throughput, and airtight security. But how do you know which box to buy? Even though all VPN gateways implement the same basic IP Security (IPSec) standards, there are still big differences among products - and not just in terms of which vendor supports the longest list of acronyms.
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Bandwidth Managers: From Chaos, Order
Network Computing
June 12, 2000
WAN circuits may be getting faster, but for most sites there's still a huge speed mismatch between LAN and WAN data rates. That's where Internet traffic managers come in: These devices sit just inside the WAN periphery and "groom" traffic when congestion hits to ensure that mission-critical flows get serviced first. To determine whether these boxes work as advertised, Network Computing commissioned Network Test to evaluate bandwidth managers with more traffic and more concurrent sessions than any previous evaluation.
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Proxy Caches: Speeding Up the Web
Data Communications
October 1999
The members of Polyteam -- Alex Rousskov, and Duane Wessels, and Glenn Chisholm -- not only codeveloped the most popular open-source proxy cache, but also built the de facto standard tool for evaluating cache performance. Now, in their first magazine test (commissioned for Data Communications), Polyteam finds major improvements in cache throughput and response time, but also big differences in price and performance.
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The Lone Router
Data Communications
September 21, 1999
In May 1999, Data Comm asked 11 vendors to submit high-performance routers for testing. Six weeks later, only one showed up.
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VOIP Gateways: Voicing Doubts?
Data Communications
September 1999
On quiet networks everything sounds great. But quality takes a hit when congestion is introduced.
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