Performance and Recommended Use of AB545A 4-Port Gigabit Ethernet Cards

Gigabit Ethernet Bidirectional Traffic Performance

Figure 6 shows the performance results when bidirectional (simultaneous inbound and

outbound) traffic is run through the card with a standard 1500-byte MTU.

Following are some of the highlights showing the excellent performance the AB545A

achieved during bidirectional traffic testing:

Figure 6

AB545A Bidirectional Throughput in rx4640

• Bidirectional Gigabit Ethernet traffic through 1 port achieved link rate -- an excellent

1.89 gigabits per second on the rx4640.

• 2 ports of bidirectional Gigabit Ethernet traffic provided an excellent 3.204 gigabits per

second of application data throughput.

• Bidirectional Gigabit Ethernet traffic through 3 ports achieved a very good 3.767

gigabits per second depending on the rx4640. Most importantly the 1000 Base-T ports

maintained a balance of transmit and receive throughput even when all 4 ports were

simultaneously under a heavy load.

Sustained bidirectional traffic on all 4 ports doubles the bandwidth requirements of the

ports being actively used and pushes the total needed bandwidth closer to or beyond the

limits imposed by PCIX-133 bus and bridge technologies.

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

4,000

4,500

Megabits per second

rx4640 PCIX-133

1,890 3,203 3,767 4,012

1 port bd 2 ports bd 3 ports bd 4 ports bd