Users Guide

Pause and Resume of Traffic
The pause message is used by the sending device to inform the receiving device about a congested, heavily-
loaded traffic state that has been identified. When the interface of a sending device transmits a pause frame,
the recipient acknowledges this frame by temporarily halting the transmission of data packets. The sending
device requests the recipient to restart the transmission of data traffic when the congestion eases and
reduces. The time period that is specified in the pause frame defines the duration for which the flow of data
packets is halted. When the time period elapses, the transmission restarts.
When a device sends a pause frame to another device, the time for which the sending of packets from the
other device must be stopped is contained in the pause frame. The device that sent the pause frame empties
the buffer to be less than the threshold value and restarts the acceptance of data packets.
Dynamic ingress buffering enables the sending of pause frames at different thresholds based on the number
of ports that experience congestion at a time. This behavior impacts the total buffer size used by a particular
lossless priority on an interface. The pause and resume thresholds can also be configured dynamically. You
can configure a buffer size, pause threshold, ingress shared threshold weight, and resume threshold to
control and manage the total amount of buffers that are to be used in your network environment.
Buffer Sizes for Lossless or PFC Packets
You can configure up to a maximum of 4 lossless (PFC) queues. By configuring 4 lossless queues, you can
configure 4 different priorities and assign a particular priority to each application that your network is used to
process. For example, you can assign a higher priority for time-sensitive applications and a lower priority for
other services, such as file transfers. You can configure the amount of buffer space to be allocated for each
priority and the pause or resume thresholds for the buffer. This method of configuration enables you to
effectively manage and administer the behavior of lossless queues.
Although the system contains of space for shared buffers, a minimum guaranteed buffer is provided to all the
internal and external ports in the system for both unicast and multicast traffic. This minimum guaranteed
buffer reduces the total available shared buffer to . This shared buffer can be used for lossy and lossless
traffic.
The default behavior causes up to a maximum of 6.6 MB to be used for PFC-related traffic. The remaining
approximate space of 1 MB can be used by lossy traffic. You can allocate all the remaining 1 MB to lossless
PFC queues. If you allocate in such a way, the performance of lossy traffic is reduced and degraded. Although
you can allocate a maximum buffer size, it is used only if a PFC priority is configured and applied on the
interface.
The number of lossless queues supported on the system is dependent on the availability of total buffers for
PFC. The default configuration in the system guarantees a minimum of 52 KB per queue if all the 128 queues
are congested. However, modifying the buffer allocation per queue impacts this default behavior.
By default the total available buffer for PFC is 6.6 MB and when you configure dynamic ingress buffering, a
minimum of least 52 KB per queue is used when all ports are congested.
Data Center Bridging (DCB) 270