Abstract

HP Procurve Switch 5308xl vs Cisco Catalyst 4006 (Tolly Report #202153, Aug 2002)

Tolly engineers measured zero-loss throughput, latency, QoS behavior, and price in Fast-Ethernet, Gigabit-Ethernet, and mixed topologies. The 5308xl delivered 100% of theoretical wire speed at Layer 2 and 99.5% at Layer 3 in every scenario, while Catalyst 4006 handled only 25% of line rate when Gigabit uplinks were active but did reach full line rate in Fast-Ethernet tests.

Latency tests showed at least 20% lower delay for the 5308xl across all packet sizes; for example, with 1,518-byte frames in Fast-Ethernet the HP switch averaged 153 µs versus Cisco’s 223 µs. QoS flow-rate and classification exercises confirmed that the 5308xl enforced IEEE priority mappings correctly and dropped oversubscribed lower-priority traffic as expected, whereas the Catalyst mis-queued packets and could not sustain more than 50% of line rate under policy load.

Cost analysis reinforced the technical edge: a 32-port Gigabit configuration of the 5308xl listed at $11,791 compared with $52,495 for the Catalyst, giving HP four-times better performance at one-fourth the price. Overall, the Procurve 5308xl combines wire-speed throughput, lower latency, standards-compliant QoS, and far lower acquisition cost, making it the stronger choice for high-density campus switching environments where Gigabit traffic matters.