x86-Based Switching at Ludicrous Speed on Software Gone Wild
Imagine you want to have an IPv6-only access network and transport residual IPv4 traffic tunneled across it. Sounds great, but you need to terminate those tunnels and encapsulate/decapsulate IPv4 traffic at multi-gigabit rate.
There are plenty of reassuringly-expensive hardware solutions that can do that, or you could work with really smart people and get software-based solution that can do 20 Gbps per CPU core.
Read more ...
Cisco says its new Nexus 9000 switches provide a two-year time-to-market advantage over its competition, an order of magnitude increase in the number of endpoints, and 25G at the price of 10G and 100G at the price of 40G.


This could bring in a lot of Chinese developer talent.