Cisco Cisco 5760 Wireless LAN Controller Libro bianco
Copyright © 2013 Miercom Cisco 3850 and 5760 Wireless Controllers Page 2
wired and wired infrastructure, simplifying life for
network administrators.
Aruba 7240 Wireless Controller supports 40Gbps
Aruba 7240 Wireless Controller supports 40Gbps
of throughput. In comparison, Cisco WLC 5760
wireless LAN controller can handle 60Gbps of
throughput, and the Catalyst 3850 switch supports
up to 40Gbps of wireless throughput.
Figure 1
on
page 1
shows the comparison
throughput with IMIX traffic. Cisco WLC 5760
achieved 50Gbps, Cisco Catalyst 3850 reached
37Gbps, and Aruba 7240 attained 8Gbps.
Compared to Aruba 7240, Cisco WLC 5760
provides 625% better throughput and Cisco
Catalyst 3850 delivers 460% better throughput.
Performance
Cisco Catalyst 3850, WLC 5760 and Aruba 7240
were tested for throughput using RFC 2544. For
the Cisco devices, lightweight access point
simulators were used instead of actual LAPs to
inject nearly 100% line rate traffic. The Aruba
7240 was tested connected directly to the Spirent
Testing Center, Cisco Catalyst 3850 and WLC
5760 do encapsulation and de-capsulation for
bidirectional traffic, while Aruba 7240 does not.
All three wireless controllers tested could maintain
All three wireless controllers tested could maintain
maximum throughput with larger frames, however
the equation changes completely for smaller
frame sizes. See
Figure 2
. With smaller frame
sizes, Catalyst 3850 and WLC 5760 provided
more than 70% of line rate, while Aruba only
achieved less than 15% of line rate.
In this test, a 1420-byte frame size was used to
In this test, a 1420-byte frame size was used to
avoid fragmentation that is caused by
encapsulation overhead caused by the lightweight
access point simulator. The protocol overhead
includes IP and UDP headers for CAPWAP
tunneling, CAPWAP header, and 802.11 headers.
Cisco’s ability to handle more traffic throughput for
Cisco’s ability to handle more traffic throughput for
small sized frames is based on the new
programmable ASIC called UADP ASIC. Aruba
7200 series uses multiple network processors.
Dedicated hardware, such as ASIC, is faster than a
network processor. Networking devices from Cisco
with UADP ASIC provide better frame transmittal.
Production environments use small to middle sized
frames. See
Figure 3
on
page 3
. Regardless of the
frame size, the network process on an Aruba 7240
controller cannot scale with the increase in number
of packets, resulting in lower throughput at smaller
frame sizes. Because of expected growth of gigabit
wireless networking on each access point, the
number of supported access points and aggregate
throughput of a wireless controller will be important
factors. Throughput literally determines the number
of 802.11ac lightweight access points in production
environments.
Throughput testing used IMIX traffic, common for
Throughput testing used IMIX traffic, common for
measuring throughput in a real-world environment.
With IMIX traffic, different frame sizes with different
ratios are transmitted. The three controllers were
also tested with IMIX-based throughput. See
Table 1
on
page 3
on Ratio of IP Packet Sizes used
in this IMIX test.
Quality of Service
Aruba 7240 and Cisco WLC 5760 were tested for
QoS during high volume traffic. Mean Opinion
Score (MOS) describes whether the voice or video
communication experience is acceptable for use
using a numerical range between one and five. Five
is perfect, three is passable, two is poor, and one
is impossible to communicate. Normal land line
Figure 2: Line Utilization
Cisco WLC 5760
wireless controller
and Catalyst 3850
switch with
integrated wireless
controller both
demonstrate
superior throughput
by percent of line
rate compared to
the Aruba 7240
controller.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
128
256
512
1370
1420
Li
ne R
at
e (
%
)
Frame Size (Frames)
Aruba
7240
Cisco
Catalyst
3850
Cisco
Cisco
WLC
5760
Source: Miercom, May 2013