Tolly Issues Reports on Huawei Access Point Performance versus Cisco, and Huawei Enterprise Router Throughput

The Tolly Group has released two reports comparing the  Huawei Access Point solutions to comparable products from Cisco.  Huawei commissioned these reports.  One guess as to which company came out ahead!  They also released a throughput report on four of Huawei's router products.  The timing of the release of these reports is interesting given the press Huawei has received in the past couple of months in the US press.

The three reports were issued in early November. 

• Huawei AP7110 WLAN Access Point Rate/Range Performance Evaluation vs. Cisco Aironet 3602i AP. Document 212142
• Huawei AP6010 WLAN Access Point Performance Evaluation vs. Cisco Aironet 3502i AP. Document 212143
• Huawei AR G3 Series Enterprise Routers GbE and 10GbE Forwarding and IPsec Throughput.  Document 212140.  This document isn’t a competitor comparative document. The report  measures performance of four of Huawei’s routers.  

The Access Point  reports found the Huawei products to provide consistently higher  single and multi client throughputs at the distances tested. In general, the delta was higher as the distance increased.

These are valid reports. Quite concise.  Tolly explains in detail the test methodology results.  Vendors work with Tolly on the test plan defining what they wish to be tested. The results “are what they are”.  If the vendor is unhappy with the report, the report may never be see the light of day.

So why would a vendor commission these studies?  Third party validation.  Bandwidth.  Tolly may find it easier to get assistance from a third party if they have technical questions.  Cisco didn’t appear to have been involved with these tests.  From the test report, “In accordance with Tolly’s Fair Testing Charter, Tolly personnel invited representatives from Cisco Systems to review the testing.  Cisco did not respond to the invitation to participate in the evaluation and review the test plan.”

http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/10/us-intelligence-report-dont-trust-huawei.html

According to Tolly Group, over 65% of the Fortune 100 utilize Tolly reports.  A  huge number of reports are available for free to registered users.   www.tolly.com  http://www.tolly.com/AboutUs.aspx

Tolly Publishes Ease of Management and Usability Evaluation Test – Internet Security Suites for SMB Users

Tolly has published a February 2012 study on “Ease of Management and Usability Evaluation against Competing Security Suites for SMB Users”. This commissioned test included 10 company’s’ SMB Internet Security Suite Products. In alphabetical order, the companies in the report are AVG Technologies, Avast, Avira, ESET, Kaspersky, McAfee, Sophos, Symantec, and Trend Micro.

In sponsored tests, the sponsor selects tasks and the vendors. While cherry picking can take place, for tasks where the results are quantitative, the results “are what they are”. From a devil’s advocate perspective, what should thought about from the customer perspective includes “how often will I be performing that task”, “ what difference does a few seconds make”, “what difference does a couple of steps make”, particularly if these tasks are only done during initial setup or infrequently. Below are the tallies for who had the most firsts and who had the most seconds. In the report, first includes “By Default” and “Home Screen”.

Firsts on the Usability Evaluation Test

5 – Sophos

4 – AVG Technologies

2 – Avast, Avira, Kaspersky, Trend Micro

Seconds in the Usability Evaluation Test

4 – AVG Technologies

3 – ESET, Kaspersky

2 - Avira

The report itself has a grid illustrating the complete results.

A test like this doesn’t measure the ability of the products to stop malware. For that, you should go to the various test organizations such as www.av-test.org, www.av-comparatives.org, www.virusbtn.com , www.icsalabs.com and view results for products that have been tested.

The report “Ease of Management and Usability Evaluation against Competing Security Suites for SMB Users” is at

http://tolly.com/DocDetail.aspx?DocNumber=212102

Tally also has an interesting and informative library of tests they’ve performed for various companies. It’s well worth visiting their site. A report just released is “Bit9 Parity Suite 6.0 Comparison of Bit9 Advanced Threat Solution versus McAfee Endpoint Protection Suite and Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.”

About the Tolly Group

The company was founded by Kevin Tolly in 1989 to provide hands-on evaluation and certification of Information Technology products and services.

The Tolly Group enjoys a unique position in the information technology sector. As the premier independent test lab and provider of third-party validation services, Tolly has worked with virtually every major vendor and evaluated the most important products and technologies to appear over the past decade. In addition, in many cases, The Tolly Group has tested these solutions not once but many times, tracking products as they evolve and markets as they mature.

www.tolly.com