Specifying the Switching Fabric Capacities of Switched Local Area Networks’ Nodal Devices

The designs of switched Local Area Networks (switched LANs) in practice are largely based on heuristics and experience; in fact in many situations, switches are just purchased and installed arbitrarily, without any formal approach or approaches for specifying the buffers’ (memories’) capacities and Switching Fabric Switching and Forwarding Rates (SFSFRs): that is, the switches’ processors’ data processing/transfer rates. This apparently stems from the fact that, empirical formula(s) for performing the specifications of switches’ memories’ capacities and their SFSFRs are presently, from available literature evidence, not available. But the memories’ capacities and SFSFRs determine the energy consumption of these devices: the larger their values, the more the energy that is consumed and vice-versa. Therefore, installing switches with arbitrarily large memories and SFSFRs in switched LANs results in networks that waste energy during operations. Arbitrarily small SFSFRs are also detrimental to LANs, these being the major contributory factors to the sluggishness of networks: which in turn, results in waste in energy consumed by attached hosts. The need to have correctly specified SFSFRs is therefore very important. In this paper, we explain a novel approach that we developed for optimally specifying the SFSFRs of the switches that interconnect users’ hosts in any LAN. ©, Engineers Australia.