In
computer networking
A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...
, east-west traffic is
network traffic Network traffic or data traffic is the amount of data moving across a network at a given point of time. Network data in computer networks is mostly encapsulated in network packets, which provide the load in the network. Network traffic is the main ...
among devices within a specific
data center
A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems.
Since IT operations are crucial for busines ...
. The other direction of traffic flow is
north-south traffic
In computer networking, north-south traffic is network traffic flowing into and out of a data center.
Traffic
Based on the most commonly deployed network topology of systems within a data center, north–south traffic typically indicates data flow ...
, data flowing from or to a system physically residing outside the data center.
Traffic
As a result of
virtualization
In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers.
Virtualization began in the 1960s wit ...
,
private cloud, converged, and
hyper-converged infrastructure adoption, east-west traffic volumes have increased.
Today many virtual functions including virtual firewalls, load balancers and other
software-defined networking
Software-defined networking (SDN) is an approach to network management that uses abstraction to enable dynamic and programmatically efficient network configuration to create grouping and segmentation while improving network performance and monit ...
(SDN) perform various functions and services that previously ran on physical hardware.
As these components relay data to each other, they increase traffic on the network, which can increase
latency and cause
network congestion
Network congestion in data networking and queueing theory is the reduced quality of service that occurs when a network node or link is carrying more data than it can handle. Typical effects include queueing delay, packet loss or the blocking of ...
.
As disaggregated compute and storage becomes popular, east-west traffic volumes will increase.
Traditionally, many data centers today deploy their systems using a
fat-tree or CLOS topology. In this
network topology
Network topology is the arrangement of the elements (Data link, links, Node (networking), nodes, etc.) of a communication network. Network topology can be used to define or describe the arrangement of various types of telecommunication networks, ...
, servers and appliances that host applications are deployed within the racks. There is a top of the rack (ToR) switch (a leaf switch) that connects the systems within the rack as well as to other spine switches. The spine switches connect ToRs as well as provide connectivity to other spine switches through another layer of switch.
Applications communicate with other applications running on other systems for typical services, such as accessing an asset stored in another device, gathering results from a micro-service task(s) executed on other systems, or simply getting a status update from
management software.
See also
*
Virtual private network
Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network (i.e. any computer network which is not the public Internet) across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted (as they are not con ...
References
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Data processing
Computer data
Electronics