QFabric

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QFabric is a proprietary technology proposed by Juniper Networks. In contrary to open standards such as OpenFlow, QFabric is regarded as a vendor proprietary approach. [1] Its goal is to simplify the traditional tree architecture of L2/L3 switches to a single tier any-to-any connectivity.

Contents

Competing Technologies

Competing technologies to QFabric include IEEE 802.1aq, MC-LAG, VXLAN, FabricPath, Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS), and the IETF TRILL standard. [2]

System Components

QFabric System Components consists of:

Performance Improvement

For data center architecture, QFabric creates a single logical switch that connects the entire data center rather than tiers of multiple access aggregation and core switches. The reason why this can improve performance is that, instead of going through multiple tiers of switches in a traditional network, packets only get through the infrastructure in a single hop, so this can reduce the delay significantly. [3] For example, a typical switch can handle 200 ports, while QFabric can scale up to 6000 ports with lossless 10Gbps speed. In a QFX3000-M QFabric System, which supports up to 768 10GbE ports, the average end-to-end latency can be as short as 3 microseconds. In QFX3000-G QFabric System, although it supports up to 6,144 10GbE ports, by connecting all nodes in a full-mesh topology, it can achieve an average port-to-port latency of 5 microseconds.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethernet</span> Computer networking technology

Ethernet is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1983 as IEEE 802.3. Ethernet has since been refined to support higher bit rates, a greater number of nodes, and longer link distances, but retains much backward compatibility. Over time, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies such as Token Ring, FDDI and ARCNET.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Network topology</span> Arrangement of a communication network

Network topology is the arrangement of the elements of a communication network. Network topology can be used to define or describe the arrangement of various types of telecommunication networks, including command and control radio networks, industrial fieldbusses and computer networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telecommunications network</span> Network for communications over distance

A telecommunications network is a group of nodes interconnected by telecommunications links that are used to exchange messages between the nodes. The links may use a variety of technologies based on the methodologies of circuit switching, message switching, or packet switching, to pass messages and signals.

The Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is a network protocol that builds a loop-free logical topology for Ethernet networks. The basic function of STP is to prevent bridge loops and the broadcast radiation that results from them. Spanning tree also allows a network design to include backup links providing fault tolerance if an active link fails.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless mesh network</span> Radio nodes organized in a mesh topology

A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a communications network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. It can also be a form of wireless ad hoc network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mesh networking</span> Network with multiple links between nodes

A mesh network is a local area network topology in which the infrastructure nodes connect directly, dynamically and non-hierarchically to as many other nodes as possible and cooperate with one another to efficiently route data to and from clients.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RapidIO</span> High-speed interconnect technology

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer network</span> Network that allows computers to share resources and communicate with each other

A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. Computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are made up of telecommunication network technologies based on physically wired, optical, and wireless radio-frequency methods that may be arranged in a variety of network topologies.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edge computing</span> Distributed computing paradigm

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Arista Networks, Inc. is an American computer networking company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company designs and sells multilayer network switches to deliver software-defined networking (SDN) for large datacenter, cloud computing, high-performance computing, and high-frequency trading environments. These products include 10/25/40/50/100/200/400/800 gigabit low-latency cut-through Ethernet switches. Arista's Linux-based network operating system, Extensible Operating System (EOS), runs on all Arista products.

Software-defined networking (SDN) is an approach to network management that enables dynamic and programmatically efficient network configuration to improve network performance and monitoring in a manner more akin to cloud computing than to traditional network management. SDN is meant to improve the static architecture of traditional networks and may be employed to centralize network intelligence in one network component by disassociating the forwarding process of network packets from the routing process. The control plane consists of one or more controllers, which are considered the brains of the SDN network, where the whole intelligence is incorporated. However, centralization has certain drawbacks related to security, scalability and elasticity.

A data center is a pool of resources interconnected using a communication network. A data center network (DCN) holds a pivotal role in a data center, as it interconnects all of the data center resources together. DCNs need to be scalable and efficient to connect tens or even hundreds of thousands of servers to handle the growing demands of cloud computing. Today's data centers are constrained by the interconnection network.

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Deterministic Networking (DetNet) is an effort by the IETF DetNet Working Group to study implementation of deterministic data paths for real-time applications with extremely low data loss rates, packet delay variation (jitter), and bounded latency, such as audio and video streaming, industrial automation, and vehicle control.

References

  1. C. J. Sher Decusatis, A. Carranza and C. M. Decusatis, "Communication within clouds: open standards and proprietary protocols for data center networking," IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 50, No. 9, pp. 26-33, September 2012. doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2012.6295708
  2. A. Mishra, R. Jain and A. Durresi, "Cloud computing: networking and communication challenges," IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 50, No. 9, pp. 24-25, September 2012. doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2012.6295707
  3. Tim Greene, "The Juniper QFabric FAQ", Network World, Feb 23, 2011.