Yesterday, the MBIX Ops Team completed upgrades on its core switches, as part of our ongoing mission to operate high-capacity network equipment.

First, we upgraded to the latest NX-OS software release, and upgraded what Cisco calls the electronic programmable logic device (EPLD)–the silicon that forwards packets.

The bigger job was to replace the 294 Portage switch, an older Nexus 3064-X with a new Nexus 93180YC-FX.  Now having two high-performance switches, we were able to upgrade the link between 167 Lombard and 294 Portage from 40 Gbps to 100 Gbps, over dark fibre.

This diagram shows how the MBIX peering network is setup today.  Blue circles are the members’ routers, and the green rectangles are the MBIX switches. The light grey rectangles are the datacentres which colocate the MBIX switches.

July 2020 MBIX Network Diagram

These upgrades ensure that any member can send a line-rate data flow (1 or 10 Gbps) to another member without concern that the MBIX fabric could become saturated and drop packets. Packet loss is a key metric of performance, and MBIX members will continue to enjoy congestion-free exchange of data with these network upgrades.