Download Solving the Jumbo Frame Challenge

Solving the Jumbo Frame Challenge
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October, 2008
Improving Application Performance by Using Jumbo Frames
Technology advances have spawned a proliferation of new software applications used by both
consumers and enterprises. These bandwidth intensive and media rich applications have driven new
profound requirements to service provider networks. More than ever before, end users and enterprise
customers are overlaying all types of new applications including storage over IP, webcasting and
interactive video over 3rd party service provider connectivity networks. Application developers are
constantly improving and optimizing the performance of applications and increasing their efficiency
across wide area networks. Many advanced applications today implement jumbo frames as a way of
optimizing application performance.
While easily transported within the four walls of an enterprise’s local area network, transporting jumbo
frames across a 3rd party service provider’s connectivity network poses many challenges. Service
providers must deal with key economic realities that equipment which has been previously purchased,
installed, and operating before the advent of jumbo frames can now no longer be used to meet the
demands requested by end users. Some networking equipment may reject jumbo frames outright, while
others accept them but exhibit degraded performance. At the same time, equipment vendors face the
challenge of not only supporting jumbo frames but to deliver wire-speed performance for all frame
sizes. For the end user or enterprise customer, they are faced with several inconvenient consequences
– either their applications which require support for jumbo frame transport cannot be used, or they are
faced with costly workaround solutions. In many cases, services providers must deploy specific
technologies in order to be able transport jumbo frames. These workarounds are passed directly to the
customer.
© 2008 AFORE Solutions – Strictly Confidential. All Rights Reserved
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Applications Driving the Need for Larger Packets
Today, the sales of Gigabit Ethernet ports have now surpassed Fast Ethernet. The wide adoption of
Gigabit Ethernet has enabled several new applications driving the need for wire-speed, jumbo-frame
processing. While the speed of links and processing capacity of Ethernet equipment have dramatically
increased, the average network maximum transmission unit (MTU)—the generally accepted value that
defines packet size— supported in a service provider network is relatively unchanged at 1500 bytes.
As a result, even though an end customer has upgraded their connectivity service to Gigabit capacities
to support the bandwidth demands driven by new applications, when it comes to transporting these
frames over a wide area network, they are often left disappointed. Some key applications are driving
the need for increase packet size.
Video over IP
High-bandwidth services such as IPTV, and corporate desktop webcasting and interactive video (video
over IP) require ever more network capacity and processing. Using jumbo frames to support these
services, however, can increase the utilization on Ethernet links and lighten the load on the equipment
that must process these frames. Application developers often increase the MTU of packets generated
in order to reduce the amount of fragmentation the application server performs thereby reducing the
processing requirements and improving the user experience. For example, using an MTU of 1500
bytes, a 64K frame must be fragmented across more than 40 frames. This adds processing load to an
application server. However, increasing the MTU to 9000 bytes reduces the fragmentation by more
than 80%, significantly reducing the server load. This technique becomes even more important when
transmitting bandwidth-hungry, uncompressed HDTV.
Storage over IP
Jumbo frames are ideally suited for a number of commercially available storage-over-IP solutions using
iSCSI or FCIP. They reduce both server and the network load, and subsequently, the time required to
perform backups. Conversely, smaller frames usually generate more interrupts and processing
overhead.
Commonly, applications implementing jumbo frames provide 50% more throughput with 50% less CPU
load than 1500-byte frames. Even so, most of these applications are still using smaller packet sizes
because jumbo frames are often unsupported by the network equipment or cannot be transported
across a 3rd party service provider network.
Data Warehousing
With the wide deployment of enterprise information systems in large companies, huge data warehouses
are now being used for business intelligence applications. It is common to find multi Gigabit transaction
flows driven by web-based tools directed towards data centers. Even with Gigabit Ethernet interface
proliferation, the wide area network is increasingly becoming the bottle-neck to deliver acceptable
response times. Large MTU are often implemented by application developers to increase the
performance of returning large amounts of data over a network.
IPv4-to-IPv6 Migration
IP packets are often larger than 10 Kbytes. Consequently, costly fragmentation occurs as soon as they
traverse networks. IPv4 datagrams are limited to 64 Kbytes; with IPv6, this limitation will grow to 4
Gigabits. Using jumbo frames to increase network efficiency is conceptually sound but, in many cases,
cannot be applied due to networking limitations.
© 2008 AFORE Solutions – Strictly Confidential. All Rights Reserved
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Jumbo Frames Impact on Today’s Networks
A typical networking scenario is that of an enterprise requiring interconnectivity between each of their
locations to an application hosting data center. Within the enterprise’s domain, their local area network
supports up to 9000 bytes packets. In addition, some new server interface cards now support up to
16000 bytes frames and beyond, and Layer 2/3 Ethernet switch/router vendors typically all support
jumbo frames sizes.
In fact, if the equipment used in the enterprise local area network equipment supports jumbo frames,
the challenge then becomes a question about how efficiently are jumbo frames processed under high
load situations. In the past, header processing capacity was the bottleneck in Ethernet switches. When
customers purchased equipment, they focused on and tested equipment performance using 64-byte
frames. Both silicon suppliers and equipment vendors have focused on optimizing small-frame
performance. As a result, typical Ethernet switches used by many enterprises and service providers do
not perform optimally in when processing jumbo frames.
In the service provider’s domain, transporting jumbo frames is significantly more challenging. In order to
ensure supply and competitive pricing, and because no single equipment supplier can accommodate all
aspects of a total network solution, most service providers deploy multivendor networks. Inconsistent
implementation of jumbo frame handling amongst equipment vendors makes it nearly impossible for a
service provider to offer ubiquitous jumbo frame support. In some cases, specifically within a
metropolitan area where it may be possible for a service provider to deploy single vendor based
network, jumbo frames may be supported. However, most enterprise connectivity requirements span
multiple metropolitan areas, even often multiple service providers, and as a result multiple equipment
types.
© 2008 AFORE Solutions – Strictly Confidential. All Rights Reserved
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Simply put, ensuring end-to-end support for jumbo frame handling over traditional service provider
connectivity services is virtually impossible. As a result, enterprises are forced into purchasing costly
workarounds, such as dedicated dark fiber or transparent wavelength services, to achieve their jumbo
frame requirements. The cost of such a workaround can cost an enterprise millions of dollars per year.
A Simple Solution to Solving the Jumbo Frame Dilemma
As a result of technical innovation combined with key understanding as to how real-life networks are
built, AFORE’s ASE3300 Ethernet based optimization platform efficiently and effectively solves the
jumbo frame dilemma through incorporation of a technique called JumboSLICE. The ASE3300 is
ideally suited to enable enterprises achieve their key business objectives, by providing simple, high
performing, secure and optimized connectivity between users and their applications.
When deployed between enterprise locations and data centers, the ASE3300 provides high
performance, deterministic, powerful and industry leading technologies such as data compression,
advanced error correction, wire speed data encryption and storage distance extension. JumboSLICE
provides another value added capability through jumbo frame segmentation and re-assembly. As data
enters the ASE3300 prior to transport over the 3rd party connectivity service provider’s network, jumbo
frames can be segmented into smaller frames for transmission. The resulting standard Ethernet frames
can then be handled simply by the upstream equipment. A unique recipe implemented inside the
ASE3300’s powerful hardware based data engines ensure that this operation does not result in any lost
or misordered packets. Furthermore, the ASE3300’s advanced architecture ensures that any packet
handling functions are latency and jitter free, thereby ensuring that the positive effects originally
enabled by an application’s use of jumbo frames are preserved. By avoiding workaround, such as
dedicated dark fiber or transparent wavelength transport solutions, the enterprise is able to save
millions of dollars of needless costs.
© 2008 AFORE Solutions – Strictly Confidential. All Rights Reserved
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Summary
Industry trends around application centralization and data center consolidation will mean jumbo frame
transport requirements are unavoidable. Workarounds enabling jumbo frame transport typically consist
of dedicated dark fiber or transparent wavelengths, and easily result in recurring million dollar charges.
By deploying the ASE3300 as part of their wide area optimization solution, enterprises can realize
tangible benefits when it comes to supporting complex, bandwidth intensive applications. High
performance packet processing engines enable the segmentation and re-assembly of jumbo frames,
easily enabling enterprises to extend their applications over 3rd party connectivity network, even when
the underlying 3rd party network itself does not support jumbo frames.
Simply by solving the jumbo frame dilemma, the ASE3300 is a powerful addition to an enterprise’s wide
area networking toolkit. When in place, the enterprise may also take advantage of other advanced
features enabled by the ASE3300 such as:
- Optional encrypted connectivity from remote locations to the head quarters or data centers.
- Advanced SLA reporting options to monitor performance of 3rd party connectivity networks.
- Data compression technologies to reduce the overall cost of connectivity leasing. Aggregating
multiple customers over the same connection further reducing the number of leased circuits
required.
- Enhanced Forward Error Correction technology, to compensate for performance degradation of
the 3rd party network
© 2008 AFORE Solutions – Strictly Confidential. All Rights Reserved
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AFORE Solutions, Inc.
2680 Queensview Drive
Unit 150
Ottawa ON K2B 8J9
Canada
www.aforesolutions.com/ASE
Tel: +1.613.224.5995
Fax: +1.613.224.5410
© 2008 AFORE Solutions – Strictly Confidential. All Rights Reserved
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