How can you really check the switch, how to load it?

Question

Computer networks

Hello everyone, guys, I came across QTech equipment, the price is sooo cheap, but they put me in front of the fact that I should work with it, and there are 6 of them, and now I want to know what to expect from it? Advise how to load it so that it just went nuts from tasks.
Model qtech qsw-2800 (maybe someone has already come across this).
A network on 200 machines so for me each of its jamb is critical.

Answer 1

Switches, even cheap ones, rarely fall under a simple linear load, usually they have glitches in logic and firmware, even the most shit in the world of networks has learned to thresh traffic. What settings do you plan to use on it? - I'll tell you how to check the work of specific chips, if you want to stupidly load it with traffic - the simplest https://tech.yandex.ru/tank/ well, or the articles on Habré were on load testing, only you need a server with good network, gigabit ones are enough. In general, I repeat, loading the access switch does not make much sense, it is better to check the correct operation of the necessary chips such as snoopings, loop detections, etc.

Answer 2

Merge 4-8 network cards into Etherchannel, and then give iperf. If under load 8 gigabits does not choke, it can be considered suitable.

Answer 3

Make a loop and launch a broadcast storm through several vlan and the glands themselves, so that life does not seem like honey and stp does not just work. If the pieces of iron traffic is not allowed or will not lie down - ok.
In general, the most loading tasks are broadcast and multicast, so they need to be imitated, loops are well suited for the first, igmp and ipv6 for the second.
But the switching matrix is ​​not so easy to squeeze, generating six to seven gigabits of traffic is another task. But try to use the advice from Radio and the iometer tool.

Answer 4

So I want to know what to expect from him?

In my opinion, it seems constructive to single out the functionality that will be required from the device in production mode (in "production") and then test each item separately. In particular, it is worth checking the operation of xSTP and its nuances (BPDU guard, etc.), ARP Inspection, MAC address filtering, broadcast/multicast traffic restrictions (storm control), DHCP snooping, IGMP (if you plan to use it). To do this, you may need to build a test bench and generate the necessary traffic (under linux I recommend scapy for generating specific packets / frames and hping for generating heavy traffic).
I do not see much point in trying to fully utilize the resources of the switching matrix ("factory"). To do this, you need to use all ports on the switch. Etherchannel here, in my opinion, is unlikely to help much, given the mode of traffic separation supported by the switch over links inside etherchannel ("Support for balancing by destination-MAC", from here ).