Abstract

New H3C Technologies commissioned Tolly to evaluate the performance and feature set of the H3C S9825 series data center switches. The main focus of the project was to validate line-rate forwarding, energy efficiency, modern overlay and routing capabilities, operations and maintenance functions, and AI-oriented lossless Ethernet features across the S9825 family for core and aggregation roles in next-generation data centers.  

The report covers the H3C S9825 series, including the S9825-64D and S9825-128B. For performance testing, Tolly used the S9825-64D model with 64 x 400GE ports. In RFC2544 throughput testing with Spirent TestCenter, the switch delivered 100% Layer 2 line-rate throughput for frame sizes of 284 bytes and above, with all ports active in a snake topology and zero frame loss. This corresponds to 25.6Tbps of switching throughput. Tolly also measured energy efficiency using the ATIS methodology, calculating an ATIS weighted power figure of 704.1W and a TEER of 36.36Gbps per watt.  

Feature validation emphasized modern data center networking and AI transport. Tolly verified M-LAG, static and dynamic LAG with LACP, unicast/multicast/broadcast load balancing, VXLAN Layer 2 and Layer 3 connectivity, IPv6 over IPv4 VXLAN, EVPN VXLAN with distributed gateways, centralized VXLAN Layer 3 gateway support, and VXLAN DCI. The platform supported 2,042 IPv4 VXLAN tunnels. Routing support included OSPF, IS-IS, BGP, OSPFv3, IS-IS for IPv6, BGP4+, dual-stack routing, OSPF graceful restart, ECMP, traffic-matrix forwarding, enhanced ECMP behavior, and SprayLink, which the report says improves bandwidth usage in RoCE networks through a mix of flow-based and per-packet load sharing.  

The report also highlights observability, scale, and lossless Ethernet features. Tolly verified gRPC-based Telemetry, INT transit-role support, Telemetry Stream, Mirror on Drop, Ansible, NETCONF, SNMP, OpenFlow, ZTP, ERSPAN, RSPAN, and NetStream. Capacity testing validated 131,072 MAC addresses, 16,000 ARP and 16,000 ND entries with different MAC addresses, up to 163,000 ARP entries and 81,000 ND entries with the same MAC address, and 980,000 routes in both IPv4 and IPv6 FIBs. Additional verified features included PFC deadlock prevention, mice-elephant flow QoS, DCBX, PFC, ECN, RoCE lossless Ethernet with AI ECN and one-click PFC, microsegment support, and fan and power redundancy with no packet loss during module removal. Overall, the report presents the H3C S9825 series as a high-density 400GE data center switch family combining full line-rate performance, strong energy efficiency, and broad support for overlay, automation, and AI fabric networking.  

Switches tested:

• H3C S9825-64D — S9825 series 400GE data center switch model used in Tolly’s RFC2544 throughput and TEER testing, with 64 x 400GE ports.  
• H3C S9825-128B — S9825 series high-density data center switch model referenced as part of the tested family.