Estimate of Maximum Network Throughput

Audience: All

Date: March 20, 2002

Sizing a network? If so, throughput reaches saturation at around 80 percent of its rated capacity. Given this "rule of thumb", the guidelines for the maximum network throughput are:

• 4 Mb Token ring - 0.4 MB/sec
• 10 Mb Ethernet - 1.0 MB/sec
• 16 Mb Token ring - 1.6 MB/sec
• 25 Mb ATM - 2.5 MB/sec
• 100 Mb Ethernet - 10.0 MB/sec
• 100 Mb FDDI - 10.0 MB/sec
• 155 Mb ATM - 15.5 MB/sec
• Gb Ethernet = 100 MB/sec

Formula: MB/sec = (Mb/sec)(80%)/(8Mb/MB)

Standard Disclaimer: "You mileage may vary" and these numbers are optimistic as they do not reflect other network traffic such as broadcast, SNMP, DNS or routing delays, application overhead, system load, etc.