Cisco’s Nexus 9516 review: About line rate
For the purposes of testing network gear, what is the appropriate definition of 'line rate'?
Stories by David Newman
Cisco Nexus 9516 review: How we did it
Details on the test bed and procedures for the densest switch test Network World has performed.
Cisco Nexus 9516 data center switch aces a grueling high-density stress test
Our test of a Cisco Nexus 9516 with 1,024 fully loaded 50G Ethernet ports - the highest density core-switch test ever done by Network World - found it capable of handling the strain without dropping a packet.
Review: Wave 2 Wi-Fi delivers dramatic performance boost for home networks
In our testing with a Linksys SoHo router, we found that beamforming and MU-MIMO technologies could transform Wi-Fi networks
Review: FireEye fights off multi-stage malware
You can't see some malware until it's too late. Sophisticated attacks arrive in pieces, each seemingly benign. Once these advanced attacks reassemble, the target is already compromised.
Macs revolutionized desktop publishing
Desktop publishing was the killer app that got me started with Macs.
EXCLUSIVE TEST: Huawei switch: Good first effort
In this Clear Choice test – Huawei's first public outing in a North American setting – the world's largest telecom vendor took the humble approach, supplying a pretty basic managed layer-2 switch that is a key building block found in every enterprise wiring closet.
What is a vulnerability?
Judging by initial appearances, our security testing turned up a ton of vulnerabilities – nearly 150 of them. In reality, however, none represented actual issues in the Huawei switch.
F5 data center firewall aces performance test
Huge data center, check. Multiple 10G Ethernet pipes, check. Load balancer, check. Firewall? Really? Do network architects need to buy yet another box, and likely take a performance hit?
FreeNAS: Flexible, fast storage, and the price is right
It takes something different to stand out in the crowded network-attached storage market. How does free, as in free beer and free speech, sound?
Huawei: Separating fact from fiction
Chinese telecom provider Huawei was hardly a household word a few months ago, but it's had lots of negative publicity of late, from an Economist cover story to a 60 Minutes piece.
Fast-forwarding firewall faceoff
Next-generation firewalls claim to identify application-layer attacks and enforce application-specific policies while delivering top-notch performance, even with advanced security features turned on.
Scaling Up With SonicWALL's Supermassive
SonicWALL's initial response to results of our SSL decryption tests was "you've got to be kidding - we go way faster than that." Indeed, the vendor's internal tests showed the Supermassive decrypting SSL traffic at rates well into the gigabit range, compared with less than 100Mbps in some of our tests.
How we tested the next-generation firewalls
We assessed performance using three sets of tests, covering forwarding rates with mixed HTTP content; rates with static HTTP content, and TCP connection behavior. Two pairs of Spirent Avalanche 3100 GT traffic generator/analyzers, each equipped with two 10G Ethernet interfaces, served as the primary test tool. We connected all devices using an Arista Networks 7124S 10-gigabit Ethernet top-of-rack switch.
How we tested Arista's DCS-7508 switch
We assessed the Arista DCS-7508 with tests of performance and power consumption. The performance tests used the Spirent TestCenter test instrument to measure layer-2 and layer-3 unicast throughput and latency; layer-2 and layer-3 multicast throughput and latency; OSPF equal cost multipath (ECMP); N+1 fabric failover; buffering capacity; OSPF routing capacity; and multi-chassis link aggregation (MLAG). All tests used version 4.8.4 of Arista's EOS software and Version 3.95 of Spirent TestCenter software.