[13761] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: NAP Solutions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tony Li)
Mon Nov 17 14:40:21 1997
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 11:12:44 -0800 (PST)
From: Tony Li <tli@juniper.net>
To: smd@clock.org
CC: horvitz@shore.net, nanog@merit.edu
In-reply-to: <yt4t5ba5i4.fsf@cesium.clock.org> (smd@clock.org)
A question for you Tony. What does one do when one has an
N port MPLS switch/router and has filled all N ports with
traffic? Consider that each of the N ports will become
fuller and that there will probably be a desire or
requirement for N+1 ports with more to come.
The lesson of the Gigaswitches and the ATM counterparts is
that scaling beyond a single switch is hard.
Yup. The obvious answer is build a bigger switch, and I believe (without
demonstrable proof) that some fairly large switches can be built.
The less obvious answer is to build a mesh, which I assume has been done
for the ATM solutions. If you're familiar with the failure modes, I'd love
to hear 'em. Yes, you do fall into the 'small switch penalty' in which you
start using up significant bandwidth interconnecting your switches. I've
got no magic around that one.
> the forseeable future.
How long is that these days anyway?
2 weeks, 3 hours and 17 minutes. ;-)
Tony
