Cisco Catalyst C1300-12XT-2X Performance
For this, we are using a Keysight XGS2 chassis with the NOVUS10/1GE16DP card. We are using an RFC2544 Quick Test for throughput with a few changes. For example, we increased the per-iteration run time to 30 seconds and started at 10% of the full line rate, searching for frame loss up to 100% of the line rate. We also test the RFC2544 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 1280, and 1518 byte frame sizes, and then add the standard IMIX, the Cisco IMIX, and an IPSec IMIX, which introduces mixed frame sizes into the testing. Let us start with 64B frame sizes.
The above may seem strange to some, so let us start with some of the key numbers. First, we observed no frame loss. We see almost 107Gbps of throughput, but at L1 it is almost 140Gbps. The delta is the overhead for the link, including headers and such. Still, we are showing line rate 14 ports of 10GbE even at 64B frame sizes.
Moving up to the 1518B frame sizes, these are in many ways much easier on hardware, and we can see closer to 140Gbps while the L1 rate is at 138.2Gbps. Again, bigger packets mean less relative overhead traffic in the pipe. If you saw the two SFP+ ports and wanted to confirm they were not sharing bandwidth or something strange in this design, here is the test that clearly shows they are their own ports. Since we were not entirely sure what to expect, we tested this across two of the Keysight Novus line cards with the 10Gbase-T ports on the 16-port dual PHY card, and the two SFP+ ports on the 8x QSFP28 card, then set the traffic to go across all ports. Even in that configuration, we did not see any oddities on the SFP+ port performance, which was great to see.
We add various IMIX tests, including the standard IMIX and Cisco IMIX profiles from Keysight. This sends different-sized packets through the switch.
Generally, we see jitter increase on the IMIX results, and it certainly does here. On the latency side, you can see that these follow with minimum latencies that are closer to our 64B minimum latencies and maximum latencies that are closer to our 1518B result maximums since this test is generating a mix of packets.
One item to note is that the green bar is all the way to the right on these charts on the ninth test iteration. That means that all ten test profiles hit 100% line rate during testing. Our gear and test methodology look for any frame loss during the testing, and we did not see any here.
Cisco Catalyst C1300-12XT-2X Power Consumption
At idle, this switch is using 20.3W. That is quite a bit more than the C1300-12XTS because we have the 10Gbase-T PHYs instead of a bunch of SFP+ ports.
Cisco lists idle power consumption at 20.7W on 110V power, so that is fairly close to what we saw. They also list the maximum 220V power consumption at 52W which gives you a decent range to work with.
When we plugged in one 10Gbase-T port, we saw an incremental 0.7W. When we plugged in the SFP+ to 10Gbase-T adapter, we saw 21.3W. That is one of the lower deltas we have seen by plugging-in this adapter.
From a noise perspective, in our 34dba noise floor studio, this was only a 36-38dba device, like the C1300-12XTS. That may not seem exciting, but often folks are looking for more than eight 10Gbase-T ports in a low-power and quiet switch, and this certainly was great in those regards. Perhaps this is an advantage of Cisco’s cooling design.
Final Words
If you are just looking for a “cheap” 12-16 port 10Gbase-T switch, then this is clearly not going to be it. There are plenty of other options out there using low-cost Realtek chips. Instead, this is a low-cost Cisco switch that uses higher-end Marvell chips, a cooling design that keeps it quiet, and has a lot of nice features, like many console interfaces, as well as an out-of-band management port. It also integrates with Cisco’s higher-level management tools, which is a must for those managing larger networks.
With a solid feature set, low noise and power consumption, and a sleek design, the Cisco Catalyst C1300-12XT-2X is an impressive switch in its class.
Where to Buy
If you want to purchase one of these, here is an Amazon Affiliate link. We also found them on B&H (affiliate link.)
