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True Router Performance Testing
Measuring the performance of a gigabit router is not a simple task. The only effective method of measuring the performance is by exercising both the data forwarding performance concurrent with the control plane stress.
To measure the performance of a router with a 40 Gb/s switching capacity, 40 Gb/s of test traffic must be generated into the router. A 40 Gb/s router is capable of handling traffic delivered over interfaces up to 16 OC-48c (2.4 Gb/s). Each physical interface must deliver many streams of instrumented test traffic -- each stream representing an aggregate of traffic flows typical of the Internet. The performance of the router is measured by observing the effect on each instrumented stream of traffic.
This application note describes the motivation for performance testing, and lists a series of steps that should be taken in order to measure the performance of a router.