4. Routing Performance

Routing performance was very good with peak throughput in the WAN-LAN direction just over 8Mbps and steady performance. The LAN-WAN UDP streaming test results are missing due to a problem with Qcheck's newer endpoints and not due to any problem with the 402's routing.

I ran some tests using IXIA's Chariot to see how well the router's load-balancing and auto-failover worked. Figure 2 shows a test in which two pairs of computers were running LAN to WAN continuous transfers and I alternated disconnecting and reconnecting the WAN cable from each of the WAN ports.

Figure 2: LAN-WAN throughput - Loadbalance enabled, alternate WAN drop
(click on the image for a full-sized view)

The plots show each port supporting over 7Mbps throughput when they are both connected. Since the transfers were continuous (think of two very large file transfers occurring simultaneously, pulling a WAN connection caused the transfer through that port to halt until the connection came back up, at which point the transfer resumed without hangs or other problems.

NOTE! The behavior in the pull-the-plug test above doesn't indicate a malfunction in the router, but is just a function of the way that networked connections work. Once a network data transfer starts, it will use the connection that it set up for the transfer until the transfer is completed. This is why dual-wan routers can't provide peak speed on a single data transfer any higher than the fastest single WAN connection.

Routing Performance Test Results

See details of how we test.