Hi, > The margin on a top-of-rack switch is very low. 48 port gige with > 10GE uplinks are basically commodity boxes, with plenty of competition. > Saving $100 on the bill of materials by cutting out some buffer > makes the box more competitive when it's at a $2k price point.
The list of 10GE TOR switches I sent earlier are list from $20K to $100K So actual purchase cost for us would be $10K to $30K $500 for some (S)(Q)(bla)RAM shouldn't hold back a vendor from releasing a bitchin switch.... Again this argument does not explain why there are 1GE aggregation switches with deep buffers.. > Also, as was pointed out to me privately, it is also important to loook > at adaptive queue management features. The most famous is WRED, but > there are other choices. Having a queue management solution on your > routers and switches that works in concert with the congestion control > mechanism used by the end stations always results in better goodput. > Many of the low end switches have limited or no AQM choices, while the > higher end switches with fancier ASICs can default to something like > WRED. Be sure it is the deeper buffers that are making the difference, > and not simply some queue management. All true... Still no reason why not to offer a deep buffer TOR...
