Conference 7.286::fddi

625.0. "Proteon 2F bridge" by CTOAVX::BEAULIEU () Thu Jun 25 1992 11:58

    
    Hi,
    
    I have a neat problem.  My customer needed a 2F bridge (FDDI to FDDI
    bridging) today, and I needed an interim solution until DECnis or
    Gigaswitch could do this for me in September. I looked at two products,
    the Proteon CNX 500 and a Cisco Brouter. I chose the Proteon box
    because I felt the Cisco box is a competetor with DECnis. The Proteon
    CNX 500 came in and we set it up and it worked. The problem was when I
    put a mildly heavy load on the bridge, it began to drop packets.  The
    CNX console monitor gave me no indication that anything was wrong, but 
    from the test workstations it looked like the Proteon Bridge was hung.
    (it wasn't really hung, it would come back to life when the load got
    lighter) The test results from the Workstations would tell me that it
    dropped up to 40 % of the packets sent.  I have to questions,
    
    1) Is there something that I configured wrong in the CNX 500?
    2) What testing have we done with the CNX box and it's FDDI interface.
    
    I have an easy out, I'll save face and bring in the Cisco Brouter,
    (The customer has already tested this from another competitor and we
    know it works)  but I would like to know if it's something easy to fix.
    ( a stupid configuration error) before I assume the box just can't
    handle the load.
    
    Thanks, Mike Beaulieu

Mike,

Any device before GIGAswitch will choke at some level if you push
medium to high loads from FDDI to FDDI.

I'm not directly familiar with either Proteon or Cisco but I believe
Proteon will run out of steam at about 20000 pps. If you use a pair of
largish DECstations you could probably choke it, because it could run out
of packet memory before it reaches packet count limit. Probably the 
Proteon will do OK in day to day use. If not I think you should consider
reconfiguring the FDDI untill GIGAswitch can be in place.

CISCO will probably do slightly better but is no guarantee for "save face".

DECNIS is looking at well in excess of 50000 pps FDDI-FDDI and should be
at the top of FDDI-FDDI Brouter performance.

Torbjorn