A question came up about how Virtual Connect manages the FlexNIC bandwidth.

[chuckk281]

Ed had a customer question about how Virtual Connect Flex-10  handles the different bandwidth settings for FlexNICs.

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Question came up from customer:

If the bandwidth for a specific Flex-NIC is set too low, then what happens to the traffic if a saturation situation is encountered?
I will assume that no packets are dropped, and I assume that packets will be resent?

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Ken responded:

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Virtual Connect uses flow control to enforce the bandwidth restrictions.  If a server tries to use more bandwidth then it’s allocated, VC will send pause packets to the FlexNIC, and the FlexNIC will slow down.

This is the same technology used in things like cable modems and DSL routers to enforce the bandwidth you’ve bought from your ISP.

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Have you ever had this issue come up? Everything work okay?

[gnijs444]

More detailed:

Are the pause frame sent for each Flex-NIC (ie. the logical interface ?) Similar to DCE ?

Or Are the pause frames send on the physical NIC (ie. for all logical interfaces) Everything is paused for a split-second ?

Geert