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Switched fabric or switching fabric is a network topology in which network nodes interconnect via one or more network switches [1] (particularly crossbar switches).Because a switched fabric network spreads network traffic across multiple physical links, it yields higher total throughput than broadcast networks, such as the early 10BASE5 version of Ethernet and most wireless networks such as Wi-Fi.
If multiple switch vendors are used within the same fabric it is heterogeneous, the switches may only achieve adjacency if all switches are placed into their interoperability modes. This is called the "open fabric" mode as each vendor's switch may have to disable its proprietary features to comply with the Fibre Channel standard.
Switched fabrics technology supports the implementation of multiprocessing systems that require the fastest possible communications between multiple processors, such as digital signal processing applications. VPX gives the existing base of VMEbus users access to these switched fabrics.
The fabric is a network of Fibre Channel devices which allows many-to-many communication, device name lookup, security, and redundancy. FC switches implement zoning, a mechanism that disables unwanted traffic between certain fabric nodes. Fibre Channel switches may be deployed one at a time or in larger multi-switch configurations.
Within a switched or mixed fabric, a set of auxiliary servers, including a name server for device discovery and network address resolution. Fibre Channel network topologies consist of the following: Arbitrated Loop—A series of N_PORTs connected together in daisy-chain fashion. Switched Fabric—A network consisting of switching elements.
If m ≥ 2n−1, the Clos network is strict-sense nonblocking, meaning that an unused input on an ingress switch can always be connected to an unused output on an egress switch, without having to re-arrange existing calls. This is the result which formed the basis of Clos's classic 1953 paper.
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While the term "fabric" has also been used in association with storage area networks and with switched fabric networking, the introduction of compute resources provides a complete "unified" computing system. [citation needed] Other terms used to describe such fabrics include "unified fabric", [4] "data center fabric" and "unified data center ...