Performance comparison of layer 3 switches in cases of flow- and topology-driven connection setup

The layer 3 switch enables us to transmit IP datagrams fast using the cut-t hrough technique. There are mainly two cases in establishing connections; o ne is the flow-driven case and the other is the topology-driven one. In thi s paper, we analyze the cut-through rate, the datagram waiting time and the mis-order rate as performance measure of both cases and compare these perf ormances. In the analysis, by using interrupted Bernoulli process (IBP), we model the arrival process of IP flow and IP datagram from each source, Fur thermore, we investigate impacts of the arrival rate and the average IP flo w length on the performance.