Netopia R9100 Ethernet Router

Performance
Testing the routers performance is really an involved task. Because of its inconsistent nature, speed tests using the Internet are so biased it is virtually impossible to draw any conclusive results. So to test the WAN port, we hooked up an internal webserver and put the router in between the webserver and a test client machine. With this method speed testing becomes more accurate as there are no outside factors to skew the results. Due to popular demand we also did speed tests on the hub included with the Netopia. The table below indicates our test results.

For the first round of tests we used NETCPS, a small utility written by Jarle Aase, the same fellow that wrote WarFTPD. NETCPS connects on port 4455 and transmits 100 MB of data across the network. Performance is measured in CPS (characters per second, which is another way of saying bytes per second).

Test Hardware

Server
Intel Dual P3/450
512MB Memory
Intel 10/100 TX Ethernet

Client
Acer Extensa 300Mhz 503T Laptop
Xircom RealPort 10/100 Nic (cardbus compliant)

WAN TESTS

NETCPS 1st Pass C:\NETCPS>netcps 172.16.6.200
C:\NETCPS>netcps 24.112.130.170
NetCPS 1.0 - Entering client mode. Press ^C to quit
Connecting to 24.112.130.170 port 4455... Connected!
---> CPS 878592.00 KPS: 858.00 MPS: 0.84
Avrg CPS 879080.50 KPS: 858.48 MPS: 0.84
Peek CPS 882688.00 KPS: 862.00 MPS: 0.84
Done. 104857600 Kb transferred in 119.28 seconds.

NETCPS 2nd Pass
C:\NETCPS>netcps 24.112.130.170
NetCPS 1.0 - Entering client mode. Press ^C to quit
Connecting to 24.112.130.170 port 4455... Connected!
---> CPS 879616.00 KPS: 859.00 MPS: 0.84
Avrg CPS 878498.69 KPS: 857.91 MPS: 0.84
Peek CPS 882688.00 KPS: 862.00 MPS: 0.84
Done. 104857600 Kb transferred in 119.36 seconds.

NETCPS reported the highest attained CPS was 882688.00 CPS or 862 KB/second (7Mbs).

FTP 1st pass
102830080 bytes received in 119.91 seconds (857.58 Kbytes/sec)

FTP 2nd Pass
102830080 bytes received in 120.02 seconds (856.80 Kbytes/sec)

FTP attained slightly higher speeds at a peak of 857.58 KB/sec (6.9Mbs).