L2 switching performance with HP E3500 and Openflow 1.0

[evial]

Hello,

I did some tests with a HP E3500yl-24G switch (K 15.10.0015) and a basic Openflow 1.0 configuration: one controller (POX or Floodlight) and two client nodes. To begin with, I used the default L2 learning module of each controller. I'm aware that E3500 is a V1 switch and therefore it cannot switch layer2 in hardware but the switching performance seems really low.

With a simple TCP file transfer between both clients, I only got a throughput of 1.3Mb/s on a Gbit ethernet network instead of 950Mb/s in native switching. I don't see anything wrong in the switch, the flow is installed in software and remains stable during the whole test, packets are not systematically sent to the controller.

Is such a difference between openflow and native L2 switching normal with a E3500?

Thanks in advance

Cheers

Eric