[Beowulf] Re: switching capacity terminology confusion

[Rahul Nabar]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 5:43 PM, Rahul Nabar <rpnabar at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was totally confused on the spec sheet (one example link below) for
> switches. What is the difference between "Switching Fabric Capacity
> 288Gbps" and "User traffic capacity 176 Gbps"? The user traffic
> numbers seem to be a lot lower than the switching fabric numbers. Is
> this some sort of overhead? Or.....

As if to make life even more difficult a comparable Dell switch here
has an additional characteristic too:

"Forwarding Rate 131 Mpps"  How does that tie in to the big picture?

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pwcnt/en/PC_6200Series_proof1.pdf

-- 
Rahul