In STAC (The Securities Technology Analysis Center) benchmarking, Solarflare and IBM achieved a top tested speed of 2.3 million messages per second with a mean latency of 14 microseconds and a standard deviation of latency at 2 microseconds using standard Ethernet and UDP protocols.

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"You can go into analysis-paralysis, " says Patricia Greene, an entrepreneurship professor at Babson College, who warns that benchmarking could discourage companies from using innovative business models.

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