Thursday, May 18, 2017

Word of the Day: east-west traffic

Word of the Day WhatIs.com
Daily updates on the latest technology terms |May 18, 2017
east-west traffic

East-west traffic, in a networking context, is the transfer of data packets from server to server within a data center. The term east-west for this type of traffic comes from network diagram drawings that usually depict local area network (LAN) traffic horizontally. In contrast, north-south traffic describes client-to-server traffic that moves between the data center and a location outside of the data center network. North-south traffic is typically depicted vertically to illustrate traffic that flows above or below the data center.

In the past few years, the volume of east-west traffic has grown as a result of virtualization and data center trends such as converged infrastructure. Today, network controllers, virtual machines (VMs) and other devices perform various functions and services that previously ran on physical hardware. As these components relay data to each other, they increase traffic on the network, which in turn, can cause latency issues that negatively impact network performance. For example, if hosts on one access switch need to quickly communicate with systems on another access switch, uplinks among the access layer and aggregation layer become congested.

To compensate, many organizations have migrated from traditional three-layer data center architectures to various forms of leaf-spine architectures. The simplicity of a leaf-spine approach is well-suited to handling higher volumes of east-west traffic; leaf switches consolidate traffic from users and then connect to the spine, which consists of servers and storage systems.

Quote of the Day

"At least two major trends have contributed to this east-west phenomenon: Convergence and virtualization." - Ethan Banks

 

Trending Terms

client/server
converged infrastructure
virtualization
leaf-spine
oversubscription
software-defined networking

 
Learning Center

What is the relationship between east-west traffic and SDN?
East-west traffic in the data center presents many challenges, and many SDN approaches hope to address this dynamic traffic.

When you should consider leaf-spine network architecture
A leaf-spine network architecture may be just what some data centers need to manage changing data flows.

The case for a leaf-spine data center topology
Virtualization and consolidation forced a wholesale shift in network data center topologies. With a three-layer network model losing popularity, leaf-spine is swooping in, but not without its faults.

How to buy: What IT needs to look for in data center switches
IT buyers need to plan for high-performing data center switches to promote easy management through a simplified platform.

Hyper-converged infrastructure forcing new thinking for networks
Hyper-converged infrastructure spurs new ways of thinking about networks and raises questions about how to manage networks in the future.

Writing for Business

Application streaming and virtualization can help you _______ greater network efficiency.
a. attain
b. obtain
Answer

 

 

 

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For feedback about any of our definitions or to suggest a new definition, please contact me at: mrouse@techtarget.com

 

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