Netonix Improves 3G Network Throughput

[mhoppes]

On a network I manage we've been struggling with some speeds at some of our 3G sites. Getting very poor throughput in the range of 2-3megabits/second everywhere. Running high(ish) end Cisco 3750 and ME3400 switches we assumed those couldn't possibly be the issue.

However, after several months of troubleshooting we came to the conclusion we were probably suffering from flow control issues as the main issues we were seeing were after jumping on our half-duplex microwave network.

Fine, let me enable flow control on the Ciscos right? Wait... no? Apparently nothing but the very VERY high end Cisco Datacenter switches support flow control TX. Oh sure, they all support receiving flow control packets if something sends them to the switch... but ALMOST EVERY CISCO SWITCH is completely and totally incapable of SENDING a flow control packet on its own behalf... what the world?!?!

So this morning we ripped out two Cisco 3750s and replaced them with Netonix 24 port switches.

Low and behold.... I'm now pulling 15megabits down on every one of our 3G sites. I would expect our WISP traffic will probably be running better as well, though I have not yet tested that (we were getting half way decent speeds on WISP to begin with).

What's the take away? Cisco switches are designed for hard-wired data center environments. WISP Switches have been developed FOR and BY the wireless broadband industry. Use the right product for the job.



Cisco Kid... was a friend of mine.....

[sirhc]

Yea the way the Vitesse implements Flow Control is a little different then most switch cores which was one thing that drew me to the product.

They call it Flow Control with back pressure which is a term used loosely in the industry but the way they handle the algorithms to determine when to send the pause frame is a little different then most switch cores.

All in all I am very pleased that we chose Vitesse as our switch core. We looked at other vendors but in the end came back to Vitesse. They are a little more costly but I feel it was a good choice.