Performance evaluation of a high-speed switching system

The authors present a performance study of a switching system being designed for use in the High-Performance Switching System project at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. A detailed simulation model is used to evaluate the throughput, setup time, and blocking at various stages in the system. Results indicate that the system can sustain a throughput that is within 70 to 80% of the maximum attainable throughput for the present choice of operational parameters. With a 95/5 mix of short and long connections, an aggregate capacity of approximately 63,000 connections per second was obtained from a 256-port nonblocking configuration. A 512-port blocking configuration provided a maximum throughput of approximately 100,000 connections per second