Throughput Measurements of a Cisco-2600 Router

Hugo E. Robles, Student Member, IEEE

and

Sanjeev Kumar , Senior Member, IEEE

Networking Research Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering,
The University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg, TX-78541, USA
Ph: 956-381-2401, Email: sanjeevk@utpa.edu

Abstract receive frames, also referred to as one-to-one traffic

mapping.
Cisco 2600 series routers are popularly deployed as edge
routers. In this paper, we present results of our tests
conducted to measure the performance of a Cisco-
2651XM router. The benchmarking methodology for
network-interconnect devices as prescribed in RFC-2544
was used to measure router’s throughput. It is observed
that even though the router supports 100baseT interfaces
each with line-speed of 100 Mbps, the router can only
support an aggregate throughput of around 30 Mbps for
largest-size frames and an aggregate throughput of around
20 Mbps for smallest-size frames with zero loss-tolerance.

Fig. 1: Experimental Hardware Setup

1. Introduction

Cisco routers such as the class of 2600 series routers are
quite popular as edge routers. In this paper we present
measurement results that we conducted in a lab
environment to evaluate throughput performance of a
Cisco 2600 series routers. In our lab experiments, a Cisco
2651XM router [1] was tested to determine its throughput
performance. The tests performed were those described in
RFC 2544, which is entitled Benchmarking Methodology
for Network Interconnect Devices [2].
2. Experiment Setup
As required by the document [2], the experiment was
setup as illustrated in Fig.1.
The Device Under Testing (DUT) was the Cisco-2651XM
router and the tester was a hardware traffic generator and
performance analyzer capable of testing Layer 2 and 3
devices. The tester utilized two of its ports to connect to
the two Fast-Ethernet interfaces (100 Mbps) of the router.
One port was designated to transmit and the other to
The traffic generator is equipped with 4 Fast-Ethernet
ports. These ports can simultaneously transmit and
receive traffic at the maximum rate of 100 Mbps. The
user can specify the transmit rate anywhere from 1% to
100% of its theoretical maximum capacity, which is 100
Mbps. In receive mode, the user can specify the loss
tolerance permitted within a test. For example, if the loss
tolerance is set to 0% then it means none of the
transmitted frames should be dropped by the router, and
the test system should be able to recuperate all the frames
it transmitted for a given load. On the other hand, if the
loss tolerance is set of some non-zero value then it means
that the test allows some flexibility in frame-loss incurred
by the router.
During evaluation, the router was not connected to
anything other than the tester. It had the minimal
configuration required to allow routing to occur. OSPF
was used as the preferred routing protocol. No security
access lists were implemented.
For throughput evaluation, different sizes of the Ethernet
frames were used. RFC 2544 specifies that the Ethernet 60

Percentage of Fast -Ethernet Line Rate (100 Mbps)

frames should be used of sizes 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024,
1280, 1518 bytes. These sizes include the minimum and 50

maximum frame sizes, 64 and 1518 bytes respectively,

40
allowed by the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard [4]. Kpps
Throughput
30

20
3. Router Throughput according to RFC 1242
Definitions 10

The router throughput according to RFC 1242 [3] is 0

64-bytes 128 -bytes 256 -bytes 512 -bytes 1024-bytes 1280 -bytes 1518-bytes
defined as the maximum rate at which none of the offered Frame Size
frames are dropped by the device. That is equivalent to
router’s forwarding rate with zero loss-tolerance. Fig. 3: Cisco 2651-XM Router Throughput with 50%
Forwarding Frame Loss Tolerance and its corresponding
Although many applications tolerate some frame loss, the Kpps performance.
definition of throughput is such that it guarantees that no
frames are lost at the device’s maximum allowed rate.
However, for non-zero loss-tolerance, a linear increase in
throughput is expected before reaching a plateau as the The Fig. 2 shows the maximum forwarding throughput
loss-tolerance is increased. that the router can handle for a given frame size at zero
percent frame loss. The kilo-packets-per-second (kpps)
histogram adds a new perspective to the data. From
4. Throughput Test Results throughput forwarding alone, it seems that throughput
increases as frame size becomes larger. However, this
The throughput test performed on the Cisco 2651XM relation is inversely proportional to the amount of Kpps
router determines the maximum rate at which frames can that the router can forward, that is, the larger the frame
be forwarded by the router for a given frame loss size, the lower the quantity of packets that are forwarded.
tolerance. The tester initially transmits at full capacity
(100 Mbps) and checks if the router is capable of Even though this 2600-series router supports Fast
forwarding the frames while maintaining the specified Ethernet Interface (=100Mbps), the maximum throughput
frame loss tolerance. If not, it decreases its transmission performance with zero loss-tolerance of the router is
rate until the frame loss specification is satisfied on the found to be only around 30%, especially when the largest
receiving end of the tester. The tester uses a binary search possible frame size (=1518 bytes) is used. The router has
algorithm [5] to determine the router throughput rate. The fast Ethernet interface with maximum speed of 100 Mbps,
results are shown below for zero and fifty percent loss however, the effective throughput rate of this router is
tolerance in Fig.2, and Fig.3 respectively. measured to be only 30 Mbps. This translates to
forwarding rate of 2.5 Kpps. The smallest possible frame
size (=64 bytes) has adverse effect on the router
35
throughput and under such conditions as shown in Fig.2,
Percentage of Fast -Ethernet Line Rate (100 Mbps)

30 only 20% of the throughput is achievable. Under this

condition, this router with fast Ethernet interface can only
25
handle a data stream of ~12.5 Mbps (without dropping
20
Kpps
any frame) and this translates to forwarding rate of 25
15
Throughput
Kpps.

10
The histogram in Fig.3 justifies Cisco Systems claim [6]
5 that the 2651XM router can handle up to 40 Kpps.
However, it is observed that the 40 Kpps forwarding by
0
64-bytes 128-bytes 256-bytes 512-bytes 1024-bytes 1280-bytes 1518-bytes the 2651XM router is achieved at 50% frame-loss
Frame Size
tolerance. At 50% loss-tolerance, it is observed that for 64
bytes frames, the throughput achieved was ~ 21 Mbps.
Fig. 2: Cisco-2651XM Router Throughput with 0%
Forwarding Frame Loss and its corresponding Kpps
performance
 5. Conclusion

In this paper, we present performance measurement

results for a Cisco-2600 series edge-router. The
benchmarking methodology for network-interconnect
devices as prescribed in RFC-2544 was used to measure
the router’s throughput performance. It is observed that
even though the router supports 100baseT interfaces each
with line-speed of 100 Mbps, the router can only support
with 0% loss-tolerance, an aggregate throughput of
around 30 Mbps for largest-size frames and an aggregate
throughput of around 12 Mbps for smallest-size frames.
Furthermore, it is observed that Cisco’s claim of 40 Kpps
forwarding capacity for the 2651XM routers can only be
achieved at the cost of 50% frame-loss tolerance. The
maximum forwarding rate that can be achieved with 0%
loss-tolerance is measured to be only around 25 Kpps
with smallest possible frame size of 64 bytes.

References

[1]http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/ps25
9/ps4834/index.html

[2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2544.txt

[3] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1242.txt

[4]http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/download/802.3-
2002.pdf

[5] http://www.compute101.com/binary_search.htm

[6]http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/ps25
9/products_data_sheet09186a00801761b1.html