Dear Collegues, As network-specialists often design new networks and evaluate equipment of different vendors I can imagine that, in my own finding, more people find it hard to determine the limitations of what equipment can do in terms of maximum throughput of a certain type of interface under certain conditions, the maximum number of accounting data (such as flow-statistics) a router can really sustain, how much ATM vc's you can really terminate on a type-x router that carries x Mbit/s of traffic, etc. Most of the time, the technical specs are either over-promising, have 'sales&marketing'-type of figures or do not really apply to real-life traffic patterns. Also, it is not always possible to do real-life testing with the box, due to a number of problems that can arise (can't get hold of the box, can't generate enough traffic, can't generate traffic that is a good representation of the real-life situation, etc). I am looking for information that gives me (and, if people are willing to share, I'm willing to put all data on a publicly available website) more insight in these kind of figures. It is possible that this is already being provided on a website of somebody, but I haven't found it yet; people that have, please point me in the right direction. The goal is to assemble as much information as possible to provide the myself and everyone who wants to know with real-life information about what a certain piece of hardware can do, to complement and/or confirm the figures from the spec-sheet. Please reply off-list. I will post a summary on the list for the people that are interested. Regards, -- Stefan Baltus <stefan.baltus@xbn.nl> XB Networks B.V. Manager Engineering Televisieweg 2 telefoon: +31 36 5462400 1322 AC Almere fax: +31 36 5462424 The Netherlands