Abstract

Tolly Group Report #202133 (July 2002) evaluates Force10’s E1200 10 GbE switch/router populated with twenty-eight 10 GbE ports in port-pair and full-mesh traffic patterns.

Zero-loss throughput. With ACLs active, port-pair tests showed the E1200 sustaining 100% line rate for frames larger than 512 bytes and 95%–99% at 64–512 bytes. In full-mesh mode across all twenty-eight ports it maintained 99% line rate for frames above 256 bytes and 98% at 64–128 bytes while mixing Layer 2 and Layer 3 traffic.

Latency. End-to-end delay remained below 40 µs at Layer 2 and just above 40 µs at Layer 3 for 64-byte packets, with minimal variation across all frame sizes and port counts.

Routing scale. The control plane accepted 262 000 BGP routes, 65 000 OSPF routes, and 50 000 IS-IS routes, satisfying full Internet-table requirements.

Mixed-mode consistency. Whether forwarding Layer 2 frames, Layer 3 packets, or a blend with ACL processing, the switch preserved 98%–100% line-rate throughput across every port combination tested.

Bottom line: Force10’s E1200 delivers near wire-speed performance, sub-40 µs latency, and large route-table capacity even with ACLs active and all twenty-eight 10 GbE ports in full mesh, making it a strong backbone option for high-density 10 GbE deployments that demand predictable throughput and scalability.