Watch David Newman of Network Test in a complementary webinar.

Learn more about the recent Network World top-of-rack test and find out how the various switch vendors were tested and how they performed.

Discover how David Newman put the industries top data center switches to the test. Get a chance to ask your questions about the test methodologies used and the performance of specific devices. Find out what David predicts for the top-of-rack switches.

David Newman uncovered some surprising results that will impact your data center testing plans. Don't miss this chance to learn the performance highlights and pitfalls of your hardware. Is your top-of-rack switch the weakest link?

More about the test

In the search for the highest-performance, lowest-latency switches to meet the demands of modern applications and users, the top-of-rack data switch, work-horse of the data center, is sometimes taken for granted.

After all, data switches are all pretty much the same these days, right? Maybe not.

In a recent public test conducted by independent lab Network Test, several leading vendors of top-of-rack solutions were benchmarked and evaluated on multiple criteria:

• Features
• Management and usability
• Power consumption
• MAC address capacity
• Unicast and multicast throughput

• Unicast and multicast latency and jitter
• Link aggregation fairness
• Multicast group capacity
• Multicast join/leave delay
• Forward pressure

Some of the results are surprising, underscoring the importance of testing to validate what is assumed to be true. Some vendors showed key performance metrics, such as latency and jitter, in the nanosecond range while others were significantly higher. The results also revealed a wide range in MAC address capacity and IGMP group capacity.

Be sure to view the webinar with David Newman, President of Network Test, and learn what to look for in next generation data center top-of-rack switches.