Web access speed issues may not be a network problem
| Many organizations facing systems speed issues, either internally or externally, decide to upgrade their networks to fiber or gigabit Ethernet to solve their ?Network Issues?. |
But the result of the upgrades yields on average a ten percent increase in performance. And that hardly solves network issues.
Historically, server speeds have been much faster than the networks speeds.
In 1995 server throughput was topping 200 Mbps, while the network was lagging around 100 Mbps. As an IT manager, the concern was getting a big enough pipe to the Internet or setup multiple networks to resolve their internal network issues. However with the development
of Gigabit Ethernet and Fiber Optic networks, network throughput speeds have eclipsed server throughput speeds by an order of magnitude.
This has changed the game.
Neither the general purpose server manufacturers or the storage specialists have been able to provide systems with throughput which comes close to matching user demand and eliminating the server?s input/output (I/O) bottleneck.
With upgrades, new networks are capable of delivering information at about 2000 Mb/s. However, the average server can only handle about 200 Mb/s.
So the bottlenecks shift from the network to the servers.
A Bit of History
All of today?s servers are based on the computational architecture that Dr. von Neumann invented over 45 years ago while working on top-secret government projects. The von Neumann architecture is very good at managing computational processes and insuring data integrity; however due its core architectural design, it has a number of inherent checks and balances in the system that effectively throttles data throughput.
This disparity has forced corporations to continually increase the number of servers they have to match the bandwidth capabilities of their network.
But, by adding more and more servers to the network, IT managers faced a series of execution and profitability obstacles ranging from the skyrocketing cost of storage to server management
difficulties.
A new type of architecture?
A Silicon Valley start-up named BlueArc is touting new technology that addresses these issues. They have broken away from the legacy von Neumann architecture and built a server and storage system specifically designed for high-speed data transfer. They have approached the problem in much the same manner that Cisco did back in the late eighties. Like Cisco, BlueArc?s ideology has migrated away software dependence and shifted to a hardware center approach; their product, SiliconServer Si7500, accomplishes all data movement via a hardware chipset. BlueArc?s CTO and founder, Dr. Geoff Barrall, touts that this paradigm shift enables the SiliconServer to attain throughput rates in excess of 2000 Mb/s (Speeds equal to that of Gigabit Ethernet and Fiber speeds).
If we look at other companies who have taken the hardware approach, the yearly increase in performance is in the 45% to 75% range. This means 10 Gigabit/sec is right around the corner and 100 Gigabit/sec is possible within five years.
Although the network has traditionally been the weakest link in the data delivery chain and the scapegoat for many an IT manager, Gigabit Ethernet and Fiber Optic networks eliminate the network bottleneck and expose a new problem, the server I/O bottleneck. The lesson for today is to stop blaming your network and place the blame where it should be, on your servers.
www.bluearc.com
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