Abstract

Tolly Group Report #202108a (April 2002) compares Telco Systems T5 Compact (48 Fast Ethernet, 2 GbE) with Cisco Catalyst 2950G-48 in zero-loss Layer 2 tests at 64, 512 and 1,518 bytes.

Throughput. T5 Compact forwarded 100% of theoretical bandwidth for every frame size while Catalyst managed 47%–49%. At 64 bytes T5 hit 10,119,044 fps, more than double Catalyst’s 4,755,952 fps.

Aggregate bandwidth. T5 delivered 14.8 Gbit/s full-duplex versus Catalyst’s 7.0 Gbit/s, effectively doubling overall capacity.

Price performance. With a $4,595 list price and 11.1 Mpps 64-byte rate, T5 costs $454 per million pps. Catalyst’s $5,995 price and 4.7 Mpps rate yield $1,261 per million pps, so T5 offers 2.75× better price-performance.

Standards and management. Both switches support 802.1Q VLANs, 802.1p priority queuing, 802.3x flow control and SNMP/RMON monitoring, but T5’s ASIC design sustains wire speed under these features without tuning.

Conclusion: Telco Systems T5 Compact provides wire-speed forwarding, double the throughput and nearly three-times better price-performance than Cisco Catalyst 2950G-48, making it a compelling choice for cost-sensitive Fast/Gigabit Ethernet edge deployments.