North American Network Operators Group

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Re: NAP Solutions

  • From: Tony Li
  • Date: Mon Nov 17 14:29:50 1997

   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