3 ms·

Huh the ring topology is a really cool idea. With the right routing rules it could open up some ports on my trunk switch, though I'd need to upgrade my NICs. Gr

• adrian_b 3y ago
  When all the servers of the ring are powered on, the packets are distributed on both links, so the throughput of the network doubles. When a part of the servers are powered off, the topology of the subnetwork becomes linear and the throughput becomes limited to 10 Gb/s, but with less active servers the traffic is also less. Greater performance can be obtained by using two Ethernet cards with dual 10 Gb/s ports in each computer. With 4 ports per computer total interconnection can be achieved up to 5 nodes and above that each node can be connected to two intersecting rings, which is a topology very frequently used in HPC. An alternative is to use a single card with dual 25 Gb/s ports, per computer. Such cards are not much more expensive than the 10 Gb/s NICs, but the 25 Gb/s switches are very expensive, so a ring topology without switches is even more attractive.