IP Packet Overhead

Richard Hay

1 Introduction

 

What does it cost for transport?  This question can be applied to moving goods and delivering services across distances.  King Hussein of Jordan flew to Maryland so he could have his heart operation performed at Johns Hopkins.  People will pay to ship expensive Ferrari Enzo super sports cars from Italy to Tokyo.  Similarly, there are costs associated with transporting IP packets.  Another question would be why does it matter what the costs are for transporting IP packets?  Isn’t the beauty of IP the flexibility of sending packets to and from end hosts and servers to a peer across a diverse routed Internet where physical & data-link layer encapsulations are added and striped off per hop transparently?  So why bother researching the lower layer overhead bits and bytes related to different physical layer technologies at all?

 

Let me tell a true story about the first time I realized lower layer overhead matters and makes a difference in performance results.  The most compelling reason to understand the overhead costs for transporting IP packets is the impact on performance.  And performance becomes more important as more voice, video, and data services use IP for content & service delivery.  The world is going IP baby.  IP over everything.  These are the mantras of the Internet Age.  Adopt a common packet switched & routed topology and global intercommunication is facilitated.  Point to point dedicated connections are replaced with multi-user networks that determine delivery on a per packet basis.  And that ties in to the story.

 

Once upon a time I was a test engineer for a Tier 1 IP Service provider.  There was a test process for evaluating the performance of a POS (Packet over SONET) OC-48 interface on a high end backbone router.  As we will discuss later on, OC-48 has a line rate of 2.488 Gbps.  But after you remove the section, line, and path overhead associated with SONET, 2.39616 Mbps of payload remains as useable for transporting data (like PPP, HDLC, or Frame-Relay encapsulated IP packets).  To saturate the POS OC-48 link, the lab had an IP packet generator/analyzer (a packet blaster) with 6 Gigabit Ethernet test interfaces that linked into 6 GigE interfaces on two routers interconnected with a POS OC-48 link.  So there were three Gigabit Interfaces on either side of the POS OC-48 allowing for up to three Gbps of Ethernet IP packets to be sent across the POS link bidirectional.  Refer to Figure I for a graphic of the test topology.

 

Figure I.  POS OC-48 Test Topology

 

 

When I ran the tests I had some of the oddest results I had ever encountered.  Typically IP performance is a function of packet distribution.  The smaller the size of the IP packets the more demanding routing them becomes to achieve the same level of performance.  A routing engine has to dedicate the same processing lookup for a 40byte TCP SYN packet as for a 1500 byte HTTP data packet but the 1500 byte packet carried a lot more data with it.  If there are increased numbers of smaller packets are on a network, the more demanding it is for the routers to perform at the same data rates.  Here is an example.  Say the network load is 15 Mbps (15,000,000 bits per second).  To create that load using 1500 byte IP packets using 802.3 100baseTX Ethernet, you would need to send 1219.116 packets per second (we will discuss how we derived this rate later in the text).  To create the same 15 Mbps condition using 40 byte IP packets (which with be transported over Ethernet using 64 byte Ethernet Frames) would 22,321.429 packets per second.  That is more than 18 times as many packets to create the same bits on the wire condition.  So smaller packets are more demanding than big packets.  They are shorter and often less latent, but their small size makes it possible for there to be many more packets that need to be transported.  And typically, the results reflect that and fixed size tests using small packets tend to experience failure more often than large size packet tests.  But this test yielded results that were counter-intuitive and the opposite of the expected result.  The tests were passing at 100% utilization for 64 and 128 byte packet tests (controlled tests based on RFC 2544 that send fixed size packet tests using the sizes: 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 1280, and 1518), but dropping packets below line rate for larger packets.  So on the face of it the router was doing better with massive volumes of smaller packets while the bigger packets were causing problems.  Another thing that should be pointed out is that 100% line rate utilization equated to three Gbps of IP Ethernet traffic.  How could three Gbps of IP traffic traverse a link that has a maximum payload capacity of 2.39616 Gbps?  Every packet size should have experienced loss at below line rate at rates consistent with the maximum capacity of the OC-48 link.  Three Gbps is greater than 2.39616 Gbps.  Except when it isn’t.  What caused this anomaly?  The answer was found in analyzing the differences in lower layer overhead between Ethernet and POS.

 

As this book will explain, a 46 byte IP packet inside of a 64 byte Ethernet frame actually utilizes at least 84 bytes on the Ethernet wire.  But only the 46 byte IP packet is routed onto a POS link for transport.  Now to traverse the POS connection the 46 byte IP packet was encapsulated using HDLC which places a 4 byte header on the packet plus a 2 byte checksum (it can also use a 4 byte checksum but it was 2 bytes in this case) and a 1 byte flag to delimit packets.  So a 46 byte IP packet on the POS link required 53 bytes to transport it in this scenario.  So of the 84 bytes used on the Gigabit Ethernet wire per 46 byte IP packet, only 53 bytes made it to the POS wire when the IP packet was de-encapsulated and re-encapsulated using HDLC over SONET.  When you do the math and divide 53/84 only 63% of the load of the Gigabit Ethernet wire was translated to the POS wire at this packet size.  The result was less than 2 Gbps of load was placed on the POS OC-48 from three Gigabit Ethernet links operating at 100% load.  And that is less than the payload throughput capability of OC-48 at 2.39616 Gbps.  That is why the test succeeded.  Because Ethernet is far from the most efficient networking technology ever invented.  It is just one of the cheapest and easiest.  Now the 128 byte packets tests created a condition where the 148 bytes used on the Ethernet wire translated to 117 bytes on the POS wire and 117/148 is closer to 79% of the traffic from the Ethernet makes it to the POS, but that still creates 2.3716 Gbps of load which is still less than the 2.3916 Gbps of payload capacity OC-48 has available.  As the packet sizes get larger the fixed per packet overhead incurred by Ethernet and the efficientcy of POS becomes less dramatic and the three Gbps of Ethernet traffic is able to oversubscribe the POS OC-48 and packet loss occurs because the interface is being asked to transport more packets than is physically possible.  That was the reason for the counter-intuitive results.  POS is more efficient than Ethernet.  And that is something that can only be understood by analyzing physical and data-link overhead.

 

How does anyone come into a situation where knowing the per packet layer1 & layer2 overhead conditions for various technologies even matters you may ask?  The answer is found in IP test labs all over the world.  Anyone who has ever used a packet blaster (a device that is designed to perform high end packet generation and analysis) knows that the results are given in packet rates, not bps.   This is where calculating per packet overhead including lower layer overhead comes into practical application.  Also, most test engineers generate packets using IP Ethernet interfaces and often are testing interfaces using a WAN technology (ATM, Frame-Relay, SONET, etc…).  In that scenario it is key to understand the differences between the IP packets on the interfaces you are sending to and from, and the ones that are being traversed in the network system under test.

 

1.1             Packets/Sec & Bits/Sec

 

IP performance can be measured in a variety of ways.  Packets per second (pps) is one metric of network performance.  So too is bits per second (bps).  Of course, bps is far more common in marketing materials from service providers because it sounds impressive.  One is reminded of the Doctor in Back to the Future™ as he exclaimed ‘One point one GIGAWATTS!!!’ as if that was more power than could be imagined (apologies to the international audience and we will keep the American pop cultural references to a minimum).  So too is 10 Gbps.  10 billion zeros and ones sent every second and processed by the receiver.  That is a lot of zeros and ones to process every second.  It is impressive.  But how many Ethernet Packets can be sent over 10 Gbps.   What is the maximum number of packets that can be sent?  Of course it is variable and a function of the size of the packets.  As one might expect, smaller packets can achieve higher rates while bigger packets fill the pipe more quickly.  I am using 10 Gigabit Ethernet as an example but the principles apply to every physical layer technology discussed in this book.

 

How are pps and bps related?  Well there is a mathematical equation that allows anyone to calculate how many packets can be sent using a specified bps and how many bits on the wire will be created by a given pps.  Here is the equation:

 

pps x packet size (bytes) x 8 = bps

 

Now there are some caveats and assumptions in this mathematical relationship.  The number one key to this equation is that all the packets have to be the same size for this equation to work.  If the packet size is uniform the number of packets can be multiplied by that size and multiplied by 8 to convert to bits and will reflect a bit rate instead of a packet rate.  Also the bps that is calculated reflect the number of bits on the wire that are in frames (not all bits on the wire are always in frames).  An additional equation multiplying the bits that are not in frames per packet times the packet rate times 8 to convert to bits.  This can be considered layer 1 overhead bps and this can be added to the frame bps to reflect the total bits on the wire.

 

The pps/bps equation will be referred to for each physical layer medium discussed but there are subtle calculations that will modify it for each technology. 

 

1.2             OSI & TCP/IP Layer Models

 

Figure II.  OSI & TCP/IP Layer Models

 

Both of these models have logical similarities, and the main functional difference is that the TCP/IP model aggregates layer 5,6, and 7 into a single “Application’ layer.  For the purpose of this reference, the OSI model will be used as the model of choice for reasons of familiarity.  When people refer to ‘Layer 7’ it is clear the model is the OSI model and the layer is the ‘Application’ layer.  When you refer to ‘Layer 5’ the distinction is not as clear and not automatically assumed to be the ‘Application’ layer.  You know you have arrived as an accepted model to describe the flow of data through a network when there are jokes and rules of thumb that refer to your model.  One of the ‘rules of thumb’  is ‘If you don’t have layer 1, you have bupkis’ or something along that line.  This is a way of saying physical layer is paramount and often networking problems can be traced to the cables.  One of the common jokes is references to layers 8, 9, & 10 as being the economic, political, & religious layers of networking.  Economic factors play into network decision making, politics can green light or 86 a project, and as for religion, the reference is about zealot topics (MAC vs. Windows vs. Linux). 

 

1.3             Organization

 

This paper addresses how IP packets are encapsulated and transported using various common Layer 1 & 2 technologies.  The chapters are designed to focus on a specific technology or set of standards and describe how that technology applies itself to the transport of IP packets.  Vendor implementations are very diverse and sometimes may have capabilities beyond the standard feature set for a given physical layer technology. 

 

IEEE 802.3 Ethernet – Clearly this chapter focuses on the transport of IP packets over standard Ethernet networks, one of the world’s most popular networking technologies.  People use CAT5 UTP with RJ-45 mod plugs without even thinking about the operation of the interface they plug it into.  This chapter covers the world’s most deployed networking technology and how it is used to transport the world’s most popular Layer 3 protocol.  IP over Ethernet.

 

ATM – Don’t throw tomatoes.  ATM is used to send IP packets all the time.  And to use existing networks and SONET rings, ATM is established and continues to deliver services reliably (most notably cell phone service).

 

 

Frame-Relay, PPP, & HDLC – Frame-Relay networks are still found in the deployed networks frequently and the encapsulation has similarities with PPP & HDLC.  The signaling is completely different for each of these, but the encapsulations and overhead incurred per packet are similar.

 

SONET and POS – The world’s most popular long haul optical fiber technology

 

Chapter 8: Legacy Technologies, FDDI, ISDN, Token-Ring, X.25 – FDDI was one of the first fiber technologies, ISDN is still used all over the world, Token-Ring is primarily a LAN technology developed by IBM to compete with Ethernet, and X.25 was one of the first modern telecom technologies developed.

 

Chapter 9: Tunneling / Encryption, GRE, L2TP, MPLS, VLAN, IPSec, SSL

 

Chapter 10: Layer 3/4 Overhead, IP, IPv6, UDP, RTP, TCP

 

2 IEEE 802.3 Ethernet

Table 1.1 – Common Ethernet Speeds and Feeds

Name

Connector

Speed

Distance

10BASE-2

AUI

10 Mbps

500m

10BASE-5

BNC

10 Mbps

200m

10BASE-T

RJ-45

10 Mbps

100m

100BASE-TX

RJ-45

100 Mbps

100m

100BASE-FX

ST, SC, LC

100 Mbps

2000m

1000BASE-T

RJ-45

1 Gbps

100m

1000BASE-X

ST, SC, LC

1 Gbps

2000m

10GBASE-X

ST, SC, LC

10 Gbps

2000m

 

 

Ethernet won.  Ethernet interfaces are the number one installed network interface on PCs, servers, and Unix Workstations.  Ethernet has progressed from 10base2, 10base5, 10baseT with AUI, BNC, and RJ-45 connectors to 100baseTX and 100baseFX, 1000baseX, and 10000baseX.  For network administrators who supported BNC Ethernet networks, it is easy to understand why they have been preempted by CAT5.  For anyone who has not had the pleasure of troubleshooting the ‘Christmas-light Topology’ that is a BNC Ethernet network, the issue was that the network was a string of connected systems with 50Ω ohm terminators on each end.  When there is an un-terminated break in the string, the noise on the wire makes it impossible for any communication.  So clever support technicians would carry around a pocket of BNC T connectors so when the call came in that the secretaries cannot print (an indication that the network is down), they would validate the outage, and then ask who had moved offices to locate the most likely source of the disconnect.  The likelihood was that the PC that was removed was taken with the BNC T connector leaving two disconnected ends, and inserting a connector would resolve the outage.  CAT5 with RJ-45 modular connectors links uses a star topology so if a station is disconnected from the concentrator, hub, or switch, it only impacts that one station and none of the others.  That is a more fault tolerant network architecture.  That is why BNC Ethernet LANs are not widely used anymore.  And it demonstrates how far Ethernet has come as a technology.

 

Now one thing that is interesting about IEEE 802.3 Ethernet is that the whether it is running over BNC, Fiber, at 10 Mbps, or 1 Gbps, the construction of the Ethernet frames is the same.  And while there are multiple formats for the Ethernet header (802.2, 802.3, etc…), only Ethernet II is used to encapsulate IP Packets.  Refer to figure 1.1 for a graphic representation of the Ethernet II frame format.  This is the format used to transport IP packets over Ethernet networks.

 

Figure 1.1 – Ethernet II Frame Format

 

The numbers reflect the number of bytes used for each field.  Feel free to search the Internet and most sites and standards documents will show this frame format diagram for Ethernet II without the ‘Preamble’ and ‘IFG (Inter-Frame Gap)’ referred to.  However these fields are bits on the wire that exist between every Ethernet packet.  The minimum Inter-frame gap is 96 bit times and the preamble is 8 bytes.  That is 12 bytes plus 8 bytes per frame that is on the wire at Layer 1, but not part of the Ethernet frames.  Every frame incurs these bits and must have them to be transmitted, but they are not in the frames.  So they don’t count.  But they are counted as part of the 100 million bits per second sent by 100BASE-TX.  Also they are part of Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet. 

 

Here is a sample captured Ethernet II IP Packet decoded.  It is a Server to Client HTTP 200 OK packet. 

 

 

Frame 1 (214 bytes on wire, 214 bytes captured)

    Arrival Time: May 13, 2004 05:17:11.266911268

    Packet Length: 214 bytes

    Capture Length: 214 bytes

    Protocols in frame: eth:ip:tcp:http:data

Ethernet II, Src: fe:ff:20:00:01:00 (fe:ff:20:00:01:00), Dst: Xerox_00:00:00 (00:00:01:00:00:00)

    Destination: Xerox_00:00:00 (00:00:01:00:00:00)

    Source: fe:ff:20:00:01:00 (fe:ff:20:00:01:00)

    Type: IP (0x0800)

Internet Protocol,

Src: 216.239.59.99 (216.239.59.99), Dst: 145.254.160.237 (145.254.160.237)

Transmission Control Protocol,

Src Port: http (80), Dst Port: 3371 (3371), Seq: 0, Ack: 0, Len: 160

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

    Data (160 bytes) 

 

 

 

2.1             CSMA/CD

 

Carrier Sense Multiple Access Collision Detect is the mechanism employed by IEEE 802.3 Ethernet interfaces to share a common medium (like in wireless and half-duplex coax wire).  Stations defer for a quiet period and then start sending frames in bit serial form.  If a collision occurs, both stations backoff and wait a random period before retrying.  In full-duplex mode, stations can send and receive without collisions as there is a dedicated pipe per direction.  The CSMA/CD algorithms, collisions, and backoff can impact Ethernet performance as well as per packet overhead.  This is mainly seen in wireless 802.11x (a/b/g/n) networks today as they are shared media and the access point or infrastructure node that links to a wired network uses a half duplex mechanism per radio channel.  Some wireless vendors employ proprietary implementations that associate and connect client radios with infrastructure access points using two channels and then use one as the ‘upstream’ and one as ‘downstream’ to create a pseudo full-duplex mode of operation.  These implantations are not covered under the 802.11x standards but they are used to improve the performance of the wireless clients.

 

 

3 ATM

 

3.1             Asynchronous Transfer Mode

 

ATM will be around for decades.  While other networking technologies may provide more efficiency for IP Transport (there is a “cell tax” for using ATM for transporting multiprotocol PDU’s using ATM cells), ATM continues to be popular.  However, ATM continues to be a highly popular choice by telecommunication companies and service providers because of the ability to provision Peak Cell Rates (PCR) to specific Virtual Circuits (VCs) and provide bandwidth guarantees.  And for Voice and Video Services, and specifically cell phones, the service quality of ATM makes up for the cost of using it to transport IP packets.

 

In short,  ATM continues to be the WAN technology of choice for telecommunication companies looking to build out new service areas.  Now a major function of ATM backbones is carrying IP packets.  Having worked for major telecommunications service providers, it was a commonly known fact that IP transport represented 80% of the costs, but only 20% of the revenues.  ATM may only use 20% of the bandwidth for Voice and Video, but as converse to the data, clearly that portion would represent 80% of the revenues.

 

That is not to say ATM does not have engineering and provisioning challenges that make IP backbones very tempting.  Especially as IP services for Voice, Video, and Data become more functional, fault tolerant, and usable, IP networks become more practical and offer advantages.  The traditional issue with ATM networks is that VCs are unidirectional and for a fully functional network, every ATM switch needs a VC to every other switch.  And often these switches are configured with static VCs.  This leads to a provisioning nightmare as the number of network nodes grows.  For each switch added to a network, the number of VCs required to be configured equates to “N * (N-1)” VCs.  Also, the VCs pointing at the new switch from the other switches need to be added.  This approaches a tedious level of configuration and one mistake can leave a network node disconnected from the network.  And a node failure is a major problem, especially if a node is acting as an interconnect.  The advantage of IP is dynamic routing protocols that allow routing to occur and the network can ‘self-heal’ and find alternate paths to a destination if there is one when a node fails. 

 

And the biggest problem with IP Networks is the default behavior of IP routers to use First-In, First-Out (FIFO) queuing and, in the event of congestion, IP is best effort.  In other words, there is no guaranteed delivery, and packets can be dropped.  Often engineers fall back on the mechanisms of higher layer protocols like TCP to resend dropped packets.  If the sender does not receive an acknowledgement packet (ACK), it resends the packet.  Now this is fine for TCP based applications like HTTP or email (SMTP).  However, Voice and Video are loss sensitive and resending lost frames does nothing to make up for a gap in service (caused by lost packets).  So Voice and Video and streaming media typically use UDP and sometimes RTP for sending data.  If Voice and Video frames are lost, service quality degrades.  So the challenges facing IP deployments are how to deal with congestion and maintain service quality for Voice and Video.  Many Service Providers deal with congestion by throwing bandwidth at the problem and over-provisioning so there is no congestion.  New services like tunneling and MPLS seek to provide end-to-end service quality and some of the advantages of ATM to the world of IP Networks.  Part of this is to use different queuing algorithms to preserve Voice and Video quality when congestion does occur.  This is a real challenge when legacy IP routing gear is considered and just one congested link using FIFO can trash Voice and Video services.  Period.  So ATM endures.

 

IP is growing and the ‘IP over everything’ mantra will continue to gather momentum.  But it does not stand alone in the world of networking protocols.

 

ATM Signaling

 

                Discussion of SVCs.

 

ATM cell header

 

                VPI – Virtual Path Identifier

                VCI – Virtual Channel Identifier

 

ATM Adaptation Layer 5 (AAL5)

 

                AAL5 is the format ATM uses for sending IP packets.  ATM uses fixed size cells and IP packets are almost always bigger that the 48 bytes available in a single cell.  So most IP packets require multiple cells to be transported.  And the process of slicing the packets into cells and then reassembling them on the other side of an ATM link is called, appropriately, Segmentation and Reassembly (SAR).

 

Figure 2.1

 

3.2             Case Study: ATM / Ethernet Comparison

 

The graph that was created in this case study was designed to display the differences in bandwidth usage between Ethernet and ATM.  The blue and the pink data points represent results from the same tests.  The pink display the bps load on the ATM interface, and the blue represents the load on the GigEthernet interface in the same test iterations.  In this case, the ATM AAL5 encapsulation used was VCMUX.

 

Here is an example of a real world test of an ATM OC-3 being tested using GigEthernet ports to saturate the interfaces:

 

Figure 2.2

 

 

Note that the ATM Interface usually is at or near 100% performance of the 149,760,000 bps that is it’s maximun capacity.  So the ATM load is usually in the high 148 Mbps to the low 149 Mbps range.  Whereas the Ethernet load ranges from 110 Mbps to 171 Mbps.  That is quite a sweeping difference.  And it has to do with how the IP packets are inserted into ATM cells using the AAL5 PDUs described earlier.  The packet sizes selected where designed to hit the sweetest and the meanest spots for fitting packets in ATM Cells.

 

Take the example of the 106 byte and 107 byte IP Ethernet packets (Refer to Table 2.2).  A 106 byte Ethernet packet will have the 18 byte IEEE Ethernet header removed when it arrives at the networking device.  That leaves a 88 byte IP payload to be placed on the ATM wire.  As this example used VCMUX to create AAL5 PDUs, only an 8 byte trailer is added to the 88 byte IP payload, creating a 96 byte PDU.  By design, 96 bytes fits perfectly into 2 ATM cells without a single byte wasted in cell padding.  So even though the ATM SAR mechanism wasn’t quite able to segment and reassemble packets at this size  at 100% theoretical capacity (143.8 Mbps of 149.76 Mbps possible), a massive 171 Mbps load was carried on the Ethernet wire in the same instance.

 

In this rare instance, ATM was far more efficient than Ethernet at carrying the same number of packets.  ATM used over 27 Mbps less bandwidth to transfer the same number of 106 byte IP Ethernet packets.

 

Ah, but then there is the 107 byte IP Ethernet packet.  In the next case a single byte is added to the size of the packet, the whole comparison is flipped 180 degrees.  With the 107 byte IP Ethernet packet, the same 18 bytes of Ethernet overhead is discarded and this time an 89 byte IP payload remains.  The same 8 byte VCMux trailer is added creating a 97 byte PDU.  Also by design, this barely misses being able to fit into two ATM cells and will require three ATM cells to be transported.  Note that more data was actually able to be placed on the ATM wire (149.64 Mbps).  That is 99.92% of theoretical line rate of 149.76 Mbps (OC-3 without SONET Overhead).  So the ATM interface carried about as much as it theoretically could carry.  But the load on the Ethernet wire is 119.52 Mbps in this instance.  So in this case the Ethernet required 30 Mbps less than the ATM interface to carry the same number of packets. Naturally this is because the 107 byte IP Ethernet packet was 1 byte too big for two cells so all but 1 byte of the 3rd cell was wasted (52 or the 53 bytes).

 

That is quite a role reversal.  To go from ATM being 27 Mbps more efficient than Ethernet to Ethernet being 30 Mbps more efficient than ATM with a difference of a single byte in the IP payload size.  Now the 52 bytes that is wasted by adding the extra cell between the most efficient and least efficient IP payload sizes is constant, and as the packets get larger this extra 52 bytes incurred on ATM makes less and less of a difference. Certainly the difference in performance between a 106 byte IP Ethernet packets (171 Mbps) and 107 byte IP Ethernet packets (119.54 Mbps) is more dramatic than the difference between 1498 and 1499 byte IP Ethernet packets which are also selected to perfectly fit into 31 cells, and then to just miss 31 and require a 32nd cell to be transmitted.  The 1498 byte IP Ethernet performance was 138.5 Mbps and the 1499 byte IP packet achieved 134 mbps.  In both cases the ATM load was right around 149.76 Mbps.  But the difference in Ethernet performance is less than 5 Mbps (compared to the 50 Mbps difference at the smaller packet size).

 

Obviously IP packets have variable length payloads and they are created by applications that rarely consider how well that packet will fit into ATM cells.  But it is fair to say in looking at the comparison between the Ethernet load and the ATM load in the same test instances (Figure 1.2) that Ethernet tends to be more efficient than ATM (unless you are using some kind of VOIP application that creates nothing but 202 byte IP Ethernet packets).  That is fairly unlikely.

 

 

Table 2.2                Sample Data points of Table that created the XY plot displayed in Figure 2.2

 

ATM AAL5 VCMUX Encapsulation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PPS x Packet Size x 8 = bps

 

Ethernet IP Packet Size

# ATM Cells

PPS

Cells

ATM bps

Line Rate

% Line Rate Observed

Ethernet bps

64

2

163690

327380

138809120

149760000

92.68771368

109,999,680

106

2

169643

339286

143857264

149760000

96.05853632

171,000,144

107

3

117642

352926

149640624

149760000

99.92028846

119,524,272

154

3

117098

351294

148948656

149760000

99.45823718

163,000,416

155

4

87857

351428

149005472

149760000

99.49617521

122,999,800

202

4

88401