On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 03:15:28PM -0600, Rahul Nabar wrote: > On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 3:10 PM, Greg Lindahl <lind...@pbm.com> wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 01:23:59PM -0600, Rahul Nabar wrote: > > > >> In the interest of latency minimum switch hops make sense and for that > >> loops might sometimes provide the best solution. > > > > STP disables all loops. All you gain is a bit of redundancy, but the > > price is high. > > I see! That makes sense. Too bad. I wish there was some non-STP way > of dealing with loops then.
Managed switches often include a non-STP way of finding and suppressing broadcast storms -- I know HP and Cisco have that. I don't know if it's any better than STP, though. In the InfiniBand world loops are encouraged & provide a nice performance benefit -- the routes are worked out globally by the Subnet Manager. Also, there is ethernet switch silicon that has an alternate routing mechanism that's as good as IB -- but I don't remember if it's standardized or compatible between different silicon vendors. -- greg _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
