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If anything can scare a vendor into playing nice with its competitors, it's the threat of a different technology driving the vendor into obsolescence. That's the state of the Fibre Channel market today, as companies such as McData and Brocade fend off threats from Ethernet and iSCSI with products that fairly boast of their interoperability.

We tested three midrange Fibre Channel switches--2-GB units with 16 to 24 ports, selling for $25,000 or less: Brocade's SilkWorm 3800, McData's Sphereon 4500 and QLogic's SANbox2. Our tests taxed these devices by operating in full-mesh mode (every port connected to every other port), and by measuring performance under loads ranging from 25 percent to 100 percent, with sizes ranging from 60 to 2,048 frames. Although the machines all performed respectably or better, QLogic stood out with its combination of excellent throughput, reasonable latency, great features and a good price.