LowLatency Networks for Financial Applications

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Low-Latency Networksfor Financial Applications

• Arista Networks, Inc
• Andy Bechtolsheim
• September 14, 2009

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Wall Street Key Issues
Network Fabric is an integral element of the
solution and key to business success
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Latency The race to Zero
Every Microsecond Counts
TM
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Use Case Market Data

• Since 2007, end-to-end latency has been reduced
  frommany hundreds of microseconds to tens of
  microseconds
• This was achieved through a combination of(1)
  faster CPUs(2) faster Network Interface
  Controllers, (3) accelerated middleware
  appliances, (4) ultra-low latency switches,
  and(5) a lot of tuning
• Reduction on latency was achieved while
  transaction ratesincreased dramatically, by as
  much as a factor of 10

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Market Data Example
20 usec
Arista saves 20 usec in end-to-end latency
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Proven Messaging Performance
Latency from publisher API to subscriber API
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Minimizing Latency

• Reduce the number of software layers
• Application-application send-receive
• Avoid the operation system if possible
• Minimize the number of context switches
• Use ultra-low-latency network switches

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Switch Latency Comparisons
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End-to-end Latency
Arista Switch latency is almost negligible
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Partnering with all leading NIC Vendors
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Working with all leading messaging vendors
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Latency Conclusions

• Latency requires optimizing all levels of stack
• Aristas switch latency is 1/5th to 1/50th of
  other low-latency Ethernet switches
• Arista is delivering this value in partnership
  with all leading NIC and messaging vendors
• Ethernet switch latency no longer a limitation

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Scaling the Network
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Cost-Efficient Scalability

• Applications require wire-speed performance for
  fabrics with 1000s of servers
• Today the cost of fabric bandwidth increases
  dramatically as the size of the fabric increases
• This needs to change in order to
  buildlarge-scale high-performance applications

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The Cost of Bandwidth
Aristas Cost/Bandwidth remainsapproximately
flat as network scales Competitions
Cost/Bandwidth grows dramatically as network size
increases For large networks, the difference can
be as large as 101
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Flat L2 Fabric Design

• Core Switch
• Hundred of 10G ports
• Wire-speed architecture
• Leaf Switch
• 24 to 48 10G ports
• 4 or more 10G uplinks
• Overall Capacity
• gt 10,000 ports
• gt 10 Tbps throughput

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MLAG (Multi-Chassis LAG)

• Benefits of MLAG
• Leverages standard LAG protocol
• Enable Active-active load sharing
• Enables L2 Multipathing
• Automatic Failover in case of failure
• Simplified Spanning Tree
• Provides Scaling and Redundancy

A redundant load-sharing L2 network without
inventing any new protocols
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MLAG (Multi-Chassis LAG)
MLAG can be extended from leaf switch layer into
the core enabling a load-sharing L2 fabric
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MLAG Advantages

• Leverages existing LAG protocol
• 100 compatible with IEEE 802.3ad LACP
• Standard protocol, no vendor lock-in
• Millisecond Failover
• Does not rely on spanning tree
• Yet compatible with spanning tree
• Does not require L3 Routing
• Enables scalable active/active L2 networks

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Fabric Scaling Summary

• Bandwidth per server is determined by the
  non-blocking core/spine switching bandwidth
• To achieve low latency and minimize
  jitterrequires a non-blocking core fabric design
  
• MLAG is a simple and effective solution for
  scalable and reliable network design

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Arista EOSExtensible Operating Systems
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Arista EOS Modular Architecture
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Arista EOS Modularity
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Arista EOS Extensibility
Load Balancing
FireWall
PTP IEEE 1588
PXEBoot
NetworkVCR
3rdPartyMgmt
Arista EOS
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Citrix VPX Virtual Appliance

• Runs inside Arista Switch
• Load-balancing with Application Security
• Accelerates Web Application Performance

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EOS Extensibility What is Next?

• Any application that runs on Linux
• Third party or customer developed
• APIs to the network switch state
• Control and Datapath Interfaces
• Cloud Flow Interface

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Arista Product Summary

• Ultra low-latency switch architecture
• Highest density 10G switches in industry
• Roadmap to 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet
• Support for all 10/40/100G Physical Layers
• Extensible EOS Software Architecture

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www.aristanetworks.com