I think my recent blogs about Cisco ACE have given my boss the impression that I’m a bit too "pro-Cisco", so he's asked me to draw up a proper evaluation criteria for application switches. I know what the final answer will be (Cisco ACE, of course), but never mind, we who toil in CorporateLand need to go through these exercises – if not for my own peace-of-mind, then at least to re-assure my boss (and his bosses) of the logic behind our decision.

So here goes:

1. The most obvious criteria: Performance and scalability

What’s the raw bandwidth throughput available for application delivery? Will performance degrade if additional applications are added?

In the case of Cisco ACE module, it can handle up 64 Gbps in a switch chassis with four modules. The module also supports a sustained rate of up to 348,000 Layer 4 connection setups and teardowns per second. These numbers represent some of the highest performance rates currently available in the marketplace.

2. Next, Virtualization

Can the physical application switch be logically partitioned into many virtual devices? Can you add new applications with minimal increase in power, cooling and space requirements?

A Miercom report points out that Cisco ACE provides up to 90% power and cooling savings compared to a leading competitor, thanks to its true virtualization capabilities.

3. This is getting easier. Now for the bread and butter question: Actual Application Acceleration

What are the actual remote end-user application response times like with the application switch? Can the switch handle expected growth in XML traffic? Does it provide hardware-based compression support?

Again, a no-brainer: Cisco ACE provides up to 300% improvement

in application response times. It also integrates Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) acceleration technology, which offloads the encryption and decryption of SSL traffic from external devices like servers, resulting in almost 15,000 SSL transactions per second.

4. What about Security?

Another easy one: Cisco ACE contains integrated firewall capabilities, which perform both Layer 3 access-control filtering and Layer 7 deep packet inspection to identify anomalous signatures that could cause DoS. The Cisco ACE Application Firewall feature prevents day-zero attacks, and also secures XML applications, Web-services, and intra-application communications.

I could go on and on, but I think we all get the picture. It’s these reasons that make Cisco the clear market leader for Layer 4 to 7 switching for 2007 (according to a Synergy Research Group report), cornering more than one third of the market – thanks to the strength of the ACE. 

Oh yeah:

Don’t just take my word for it. Here’s a collection of what 3rd party analysts are saying about ACE: ITPro, Miercom, Yankee, and Metzler