Network devices: is more expensive better?

Network devices are fundamental items in computer network design. The selection of the best device must be in terms of price to performance ratio since there is a budget limit to build a computer network. In this paper, we compare the packet loss rate (PLR), throughput and jitter of switches from different vendors and with different prices. A standard methodology is implemented to evaluate these parameters and final comparisons are made. Packet size and transmission rates followed the recommendations of RFC2544 for full duplex Ethernet 100BaseTX. The difference in cost between layer-2 switches must be related to administrative features, number/type of ports, supported layer-2 protocols and head-of-line blocking. It is observed that the best layer-2 switch is not necessarily the most expensive one and depending on the administrative features needed for each network, less expensive model can be used and obtain the same result.