Mellanox® Technologies, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MLNX), a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, today introduced a 100Gb/s Ethernet reference architecture for Content Distribution Network (CDN) applications. The reference architecture is based on advanced servers equipped with Mellanox 100Gb/s Ethernet adapters, switches, and cables. The scalability and performance of the CDN platform with ConnectX-4 100Gb/s Ethernet NICs has been demonstrated by Netflix in video streaming applications supporting tens of thousands of users from a single server.

“As an innovator in both content creation and distribution it is not surprising to find Netflix at the vanguard of networking, leading the way to 100Gb/s Ethernet technology for CDNs,” said Kevin Deierling, vice president of marketing, Mellanox Technologies. “These rates, combined with the requirement to deliver packets flawlessly to so many users, means that managing each individual stream in software is simply not an option. We are pleased that our ConnectX-4 adapters are able to meet this challenge and deliver data reliably at 100Gb/s.”

“We continuously look for ways to improve the video streaming experience for our members,” said David Fullagar, Vice President of Content Delivery Architecture at Netflix. “Using Mellanox 100Gb/s ConnectX-4 adapters with advanced servers running FreeBSD, the Netflix Open Connect Platform can now provide the highest-quality viewing experience for as many as 100K concurrent streams out of a single server.”

"Open software and hardware platforms are a powerful combination, and we’re excited that FreeBSD 10.3, combined with the ConnectX-4 product family, enables industry-leading 100GbE server performance,” said FreeBSD Foundation Board Member, George Neville-Neil. “FreeBSD’s robust, open architecture allowed an efficient collaboration between Mellanox and Netflix in developing and deploying this advanced hardware solution.”

In CDN networks for video distribution, bandwidth alone is not enough. In addition to blazingly fast speed a CDN network must be predictable, in order to deliver video steadily and reliably to millions of users simultaneously without so much as a hiccup. The CDN reference architecture, based on the Mellanox end to end portfolio of 100Gb/s Ethernet products, is ideal to achieve this task. The Spectrum family of predictable, line-rate switches, ConnectX-4 adapters, and LinkX cables offer advanced hardware quality of service and traffic management mechanisms perfectly matched to the requirements for mega-scale CDN operating at 100Gb/s speeds. In addition, the reference architecture provides details on 10/25 and 40/50 Gb/s Ethernet platform based on Newisys servers.

The CDN platform is designed to stream video reliably and scales from hundreds of thousands to millions of concurrent subscribers and total bandwidth of 100Gbps out of a single box, keeping a low footprint in ISPs. To learn more attend the executive session at OCP summit Mar 9, 2016 at 4:30 pm, lower level A/B of the San Jose Convention Center.

Supporting Resources:

  • Learn more about: Advanced Reference Architecture for CDN
  • Learn more about: ConnectX-4 Lx for Open Compute Project (OCP)
  • Follow Mellanox on: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube
  • OCP Summit: Stop by and meet with us at the Mellanox booth – B4
  • Join the Mellanox Community

About Mellanox

Mellanox Technologies (NASDAQ:MLNX) is a leading supplier of end-to-end Ethernet and InfiniBand intelligent interconnect solutions and services for servers, storage, and hyper-converged infrastructure. Mellanox intelligent interconnect solutions increase data center efficiency by providing the highest throughput and lowest latency, delivering data faster to applications and unlocking system performance. Mellanox offers a choice of high performance solutions: network and multicore processors, network adapters, switches, cables, software and silicon, that accelerate application runtime and maximize business results for a wide range of markets including high performance computing, enterprise data centers, Web 2.0, cloud, storage, network security, telecom and financial services. More information is available at www.mellanox.com.

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