Network Substate
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"Data Center Ethernet"
- Cisco: "collection of standards-based extensions to classical Ethernet that allows data center architects to create a data center transport layer that is:"
- stable
- lossless
- efficient
- Purpose is apparently to buck the trend of building multiple application-specific networks (IP, SAN, Infiniband, etc)
- how? better multi-tenacy (traffic class isolation/prioritisation), guaranteed delivery (lossless transmission), layer-2 multipath (higher bisectional bandwidth)
- A series of additional standards:
- "Class-based flow control" (CBFC)
- for multi-tenancy
- Enhanced transmission selection (ETS)
- for multi-tenancy
- Data center bridging exchange protocol (DCBCXP)
- Lossless Ethernet
- for guaranteed delivery
- Congestion notification
- end-to-end congestion management to avoid dropped frames (i.e. work around TCP congestion collapse, retrofit non-congestion-aware protocols to not cause trouble
)
- end-to-end congestion management to avoid dropped frames (i.e. work around TCP congestion collapse, retrofit non-congestion-aware protocols to not cause trouble
- "Class-based flow control" (CBFC)
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