How To Build a 100,000-Port Ethernet Switch

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 18, 2009 @06:34PM from the stretching-the-fabric dept.

BobB-nw writes "University of California at San Diego researchers Tuesday are presenting a paper (PDF) describing software that they say could make data center networks massively scalable. The researchers say their PortLand software will enable Layer 2 data center network fabrics scalable to 100,000 ports and beyond; they have a prototype running at the school's Department of Computer Science and Engineering's Jacobs School of Engineering. 'With PortLand, we came up with a set of algorithms and protocols that combine the best of layer 2 and layer 3 network fabrics,' said Amin Vahdat, a computer science professor at UC San Diego. 'Today, the largest data centers contain over 100,000 servers. Ideally, we would like to have the flexibility to run any application on any server while minimizing the amount of required network configuration and state... We are working toward a network that administrators can think of as one massive 100,000-port switch seamlessly serving over one million virtual endpoints.'"

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NATting layer two. by argent · 2009-08-18 22:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

They're basically NATting the layer two protocols. Combined with a super spanning tree for the natted addresses they're practically boosting layer two into layer three.
Before I read the paper I was thinking that it would be easier to just run all your services NATted at layer three, even using something like PPPoE (which is how cable networks solve the same basic problem, with something like half a million end-points on the same subnet). I guess it's more efficient to work with the simpler layer two protocols instead.