All in all, the prospects for campus-level ATM don't look too good. WAN ATM still seems like a good bet, largely because of the level of investment the telcos have put into ATM technology. So, it looks like our lab may need to invest more time and effort in the Ethernet arena than in the harder to test ATM arena. There are worse fates. To download an Adobe Acrobat .pdf format version of the complete Bradner Report Charts, including Latency Testing, click here.
All testing is done using special-purpose standalone testers to ensure the most reliable results.
Because of space limitations, we are reporting here only the results of our tests with 64-byte packets, but all devic es were tested with a full range of packet sizes. The throughput test determines the highest rate at which a router or switch can receive, process and forward packets without loss. The test is performed by having the tester send a 30-second burst of traffic through the device at half the rate theoretically possible for the given test conditions. The number of sent packets is then compared to the number received. If all were received, the data rate is increased and the trial is rerun.