Channel Tech Center

There is no doubt about it – affordable bandwidth becoming one of the biggest concerns for businesses in 2010. Many companies are turning to the promises of increased return on investment offered by technologies such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI), Voice over IP (VoiP), video conferencing, web enabled applications, and so on – all of which two common traits, the need for high bandwidth and low latency connections.

Huntsville, Alabama based Adtran is helping businesses increase bandwidth and reduce latency with their newest NetVanta routers, all of which incorporate faster processors and Adtran’s proprietary FastFlow and RapidRoute technologies that increase throughput. What’s more, Adtran is offering their products at price points significantly lower than many of their competitors, including arch-rival Cisco Systems.

Adtran is counting on a one-two punch of lower cost and increased bandwidth, which will entice businesses that are looking to build out the edge of their networks to meet current and future bandwidth needs – a potentially large market segment. Of course, one major obstacle for Adtran is Cisco Systems, which is the industry leader in the router segment.

Adtran is using the age-old marketing ploy of “better, faster, cheaper” to make potential customers notice their product mix and to grind away at some of Cisco’s market share. That proves to be a timely and critical move, which will leverage the pent-up demand for increased network performance. A demand driven by bandwidth-hungry cloud computing technologies and a market that could potentially reach $16.3 Billion according to the DellO’ro group, a market research firm.

I recently had the opportunity to performance test a couple of Adtran’s routers and compare them head to head with Cisco router designed for the same market segment, small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Adtran’s Netvanta 3430, Netvanta 3450 and the Cisco 2811-HSEC/K9 are classified as mid-range class routers for SMEs and small data centers.

Out of the box, all three products offer advanced IP routing capabilities, the Adtran products add an Integrated SPI firewall to the mix, while Cisco offers a SPI firewall as an option on their unit. All of the above routers also offer optional VPN capabilities. Beyond that, there are several options and configuration choices that each manufacturer offers.

Some may argue that is not an apples to apples comparison, since feature wise, the products somewhat differ, but both the Adtran products and the Cisco product are aimed at the same market segment and performance proves to be one of the key dynamics that segment.

My primary goal here was to look at the performance capabilities of the three units and determine if Adtran could indeed meet the goal of “better, faster, cheaper” when compared to a well respected Cisco product. While “better” is a very subjective calculation, “faster and cheaper” proves much easier to analyze, especially when using tools such as Ixia’s IXChariot V7 and Spirient’s TestCenter to measure performance. Calculating value on the other hand, is a simple matter of looking at costs, included features, support and suitability to task.

Products Tested:

Testing:

I used both Chariot V7 from Ixia software and a TestCenter Appliance from Spirent to perform performance tests on the routers. My goal was to look at basic throughput, VPN throughput and transactions per second (please see “how we tested”) to judge if Adtran’s products lived up to the company’s performance claims.

The throughput rate tests showed that both NetVanta routers were able to outperform the Cisco router tested.

A basic throughput test shows that the Netvanta 3430 and 3450 offer roughly 1% higher throughput than the Cisco 2811, a negligible improvement. The performance story starts to change with additional features enabled on the routers. With the firewall enabled, the NetVanta 3430 offers a 7.5% increase in throughput over the Cisco unit, while the NetVanta 3450 scored a 7.9% increase. The performance gap grows once a VPN connection is thrown into the mix. Here, the NetVanta 3430 shows an increase in IP routing throughput performance of 13% over the Cisco 2811, while the NetVanta 3450 upped the performance to a 20% increase over the Cisco 2811.

The performance improvements offered by the Adtran equipment is due to a combination of factors, ranging from the processing power contained within the router, efficient firmware and the incorporation of Adtran’s proprietary FastFlow and RapidRoute technologies. Any way you slice it, Adtran offers a performance boost over a Cisco product, at least when it comes to IP routing.

IP Throughput is only part of the performance equation, for a better understanding of how well a router performs one must look at the number of transactions the router can process. Thanks to Ixia software, determining transaction rates is a relatively straightforward process. Using Ixia’s IXChariot V7.0, I was able to measure transactions per second passed through each router using 20 virtual endpoints and Ixia’s response calculation script for raw routing performance.

-          NetVanta 3430: 18,417 transactions per second.

-          NetVanta 3450: 18,910 transactions per second.

-          Cisco 2811: 5,041 transactions per second.

When it comes to transactions per second, the Adtran NetVanta 3430 showed a 73.6% higher average transaction per second rate than the Cisco 2811, while the NetVanta 3450 posted a 74.3% higher rate.

To validate the general results from the IXChariot V7 tests, I also tested the Adtran NetVanta 3430 and Cisco 2811 on a Spirent TestCenter appliance. The primary test I performed on the two routers was a Frames Per Second (FPS) measurement using iMIX traffic, which gives a good indication of latency due to a router’s processing capabilities.

The IMIX FPS tests showed that Adtran NetVanta 3430 offered a 3% increase in FPS for basic routing over the Cisco 2811. With VPN enabled, the 3430 offered 50% more performance, and with a fixed 66byte packet size, the 3430 showed a 33% higher FPS rate. Once again, Adtran’s FastFlow and RapidRoute technologies can be credited for the performance advantages offered.

To build value, Adtran relies on low cost coupled with support that exceeds industry norms. Adtran’s MSRPs are much lower than many competitors. Few competitors, if any, beat the 5 years of support included with Adtran’s products. The low MSRPs may sound like a negative to channel partners, but Adtran still manages to offer high margins on their products. Reduced training costs, along with ease of deployment, as well as managed services support opportunities, help increase the value for channel partners and their customers as well.

Adtran is on the right track when it comes to meeting the needs of the SME market. The company is providing high quality hardware that performs well and is easy to deploy and manage. The company offers outstanding support, as well as excellent documentation. Solution providers looking to grow their networking business, get involved with data centers, or build managed services should take a good hard look at Adtran’s product base and carefully compare the pros and cons against the better known names in the industry – most solution providers will be surprised with what Adtran has to offer.