Server Networking Internals

The design of data center network architectures not only involves an understanding of networking equipment, but equally important, the network interface cards (NICs) and software protocols and drivers on the servers that provide services (see FIGURE 1-7). There are a variety of different cards that the architect can choose from. Depending on the requirements, appropriate design choices dictate which NIC is most suitable. Further tuning drivers that directly interface with NICs and the rest of the server protocol stack requires understanding of server networking internals. Chapter 5 presents a survey of available NICs and then provides an overview of the internal operations and insights ito tuning key parameters.