NWC: Well, right, but I was thinking more of taking out the N2 architecture, and taking it down to one or two, just core access.
Metzler: Certainly Juniper loves that discussion, among others.
NWC: I've also heard it from Cisco, HP, too and it seems like 802.1aq and Trill, seem to be the major drivers, or are there other things going on that are going to enable that flattening of the network in the more even load across the tier?
Metzler: I don't know of anything else, currently, but you know, going back to simple things, just having switches with a lot more ports on them and higher speeds will be a key enabler. You know, of the reasons we had access, distribution and core (ADC), was because we didn't have switches we could plug everything into, so you always had to tier things. We have to rethink the architecture.
Of course, how you count these days is a strange thing, because what do you count inside that server? Is it the early-generation V-switch, Cisco's 1000-V, etc or is that another layer unto itself? Kinda sorta is, make it half a layer, if you use the 1000-V approach and you have the controller somewhere else. . .so I think there's an interest in the flattening.
At one time in the mid-90s, we kind of knew about ADC, and the general guidelines for Layer 2 and access, Layer three and distribution, etc, but I think we're starting a discussion on architecture, and the bit that you alluded to is the general agreement that flat can be better. I think we'll probably begin to push back a bit and say, well, you don't want to get too flat, because security and QoS that you may want to do on a switch different from your core switch, etc ... so I think we're going to be having some discussions on this, and one of the key points will be, how many layers make sense? So it's probably the first time since maybe 97 that we've really had much discussion of LAN architecture.
For the time, it met the needs, and there wasn't a whole lot happening, I mean, don't forget, it wasn't that long ago, maybe 4-5 years ago, that conventional wisdom was that servers are cheap, so have a new app, throw a new server at it. That changed quickly. And when a physical server is there, even if it's a pain to set up, it's there for a long time, don't worry about it. Everything was kind of static, the servers, the architecture, we knew how to grow it, and there was no tipping point causing people to rethink things. Server virtualization is a clear tipping point.
