Routing Performance
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: linksys, etherfast, cable
7. Routing Performance
- EtherFast Ethernet...
Testing Notes:
• WAN to LAN tests are all run with LAN endpoint in DMZ
• LAN to WAN tests are run with LAN endpoint not in DMZ, except UDP Stream
Like SMC's 7004VBR, the SX has a SPI-based firewall that has the ability to disable the SPI features and fall back to plain-old NAT as its firewall mechanism. This makes testing a little more complicated, but gives us more insight into the drag that SPI places on the router's performance.
If you compare the results in the chart above to other recent SPI-based routers, you see the SX beats them by a wide margin, especially on the WAN-LAN tests, which typically run under 2Mbps on other products. But the SX's almost 17Mbps throughput beats the other guys for best-case SPI-disabled performance, too!
If you really want to be impressed, though, check out the chart below. This table, which I also did for the SMC7004VBR review shows Throughput and Response time results for various combinations of DMZ and SPI. Remember that WAN-LAN tests can be run only with DMZ on, so that's why there are no DMZ off results for that direction.
| Case Number |
Test Description |
Intrusion Detection Settings | DMZ |
|
Response Time (msec)
|
| 1 |
WAN-LAN |
SPI enabled (defaults) | on |
16.8 |
48 (avg) |
| 2 |
WAN-LAN |
SPI disabled | on |
34.0 |
1 (avg) |
| 3 |
LAN-WAN |
SPI enabled (defaults) | off |
16.6 |
48 (avg) |
| 4 | LAN-WAN | SPI enabled (defaults) | on | 12.2 | 65 (avg) |
| 5 |
LAN-WAN |
SPI disabled | on |
20.2 |
1 (avg) |
| 6 | LAN-WAN | SPI disabled | off | 32.3 | 1 (avg) |
I couldn't believe the 33Mbps throughput results either, so I double-checked the Qcheck results by doing a Chariot run, which showed that the throughput actually varied from 26 to 38Mbps!!! Un-bee-leeve-able!
Conclusion? Let's just say that you can run the SX with whatever settings you want and not even think twice about the throughput effects of your choice.
Routing Performance Test Results
| Test Description | Transfer Rate (Mbps) | Response Time (msec) | UDP stream | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Throughput (kbps) | Lost data (%) | |||
| WAN - LAN | 16.8 | 48 (avg)
74 (max) |
499 | 0 |
| LAN - WAN | 16.6 | 48 (avg)
56 (max) |
493 | 0 |
| Firmware Version | 1.43 May 22 2002 | |||
See details of how we test.
- Previous page Logging and other Features
- Next page Wrapping it up
Tom, probably quite late, but i'm wondering which version of the router you've tested. Was it a v1/v2/v3 router?
Thanks,
Roel from the Netherlands