[c-nsp] 10G Aggregation?

[Nick Hilliard]

On 17/07/2012 17:02, Garry wrote:
> From a price- and performance-view, you may want to take a look at the
> Nexus 5500 series ... depending on what all you want to do with your
> core switch, it will not only outperform the 4500 (and even 6500)
> series, but will most likely be quite a bit cheaper ... eg. 5548 has 32
> built-in SFP/SFP+ ports with one expansion slot for additional 16
> SFP/SFP+ ports. If you need L3, make sure you don't forget to get the L3
> card (which pushes up to 160Gbit/s)

Just be careful that the buffering on each of these switches is sufficient
for your needs.  Neither is over-endowed with huge buffers, but depending
on your requirements, this may not be a serious issue (or an issue at all).

By way of reference, the 4500X has 32M shared buffers per box, but it's a
store-n-forward switch, whereas the 5548 has as more complicated mixture of
shared and per-port dedicated buffers which are much smaller - but that's
ok because it's a cut-thru (unless you're doing 10G -> 1G downsizing in
which case it reverts to store-n-forward).

I.e. make sure you understand the design architecture of these switches
before making a decision to choose one over the other.

Nick