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Preliminary
Mesh Topology
SANbox-16HA Fibre Channel Switch
5-10 Multi-Chassis Fabrics 59005-03 Rev. A Installer’s/User’s Manual
Mesh Bandwidth
A chassis in a Mesh topology divides its chassis interconnection bandwidth among
the other chassis in the fabric. That is, each chassis has at least one T_Port connec-
tion to each other chassis in the fabric. In small fabrics of two or three chassis, you
could have two or more connections to each other chassis. In fabrics of four or five
chassis you should connect only one T_Port to each other chassis. Otherwise you
will use more than half of your ports as T_Ports. Each Chassis will route traffic
through the path of the least number of chassis hops to the destination chassis. A
chassis will route traffic through another path if all links in the closest path fail.
In fabrics of two or three chassis, Mesh and Cascade-with-a loop may be the same
for purposes of bandwidth.
Multistage topology has the best bandwidth. All T_Ports from each IO/T chassis
connect to all other IO/T chassis in the same number of chassis hops (three) no
matter how large the fabric is. Thus the useful interconnection bandwidth from
each IO/T chassis increases by 100MBs per T_Port. It is therefore possible, in
Multistage topology, to provide as much as 800 MBytes per second bandwidth
between chassis.
Mesh Physical Distance Between Chassis
Mesh topology can be laid out in an area where the distance between any two
chassis is equal to or less than the maximum cable length of the installed GBICs.
Both Cascade-with-a-loop and Multistage topologies can produce larger areas.