Shaping 10G to 5G

[Mokhalil82]

Hi

I have a route link between 2 sites, Its a 5G on a 10G Bearer. The Switch ports on either side are 10G ports. I want to apply some sort of traffic shaping to allow a maximum of 5G over the link. Considering its 10G ports and 5G link. Topology is as follows
 

6880x (10G Port)-------5G Link---------(10G Port) Nexus 9k

Any ideas how this can be achieved?

Thanks

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

You don't necessarily need to do anything considering some modules on the 6800 are oversubscribed.

see table-2 in this link:

16P 10G at 2:1 in oversubscription mode (default) for base module and port cards

8P 10G at 1:1 in performance mode (configurable) for base module and port cards

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-6880-x-switch/data_sheet_c78-728228.html

Also, you can monitor these ports over a period of time and figure out the average traffic traversing the link. If the link is 5Gig and you are only pushing one or 2 gig, than you are fine, but if you see lots of packet drops on the interfaces than maybe some sort of traffic shaping/queuing might be helpful. 

HTH

[Mokhalil82]

Thanks Reza

I understand currently we may not hit the full 5G bandwidth but this will become a DCI link and we are gradually running more and more traffic over it so I was planning to put some shaping in place before even dropping any packets.

Just checking if anyone has done this before

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

Traditionally, many Cisco switches lack many QoS features found on Cisco routers.  Shaping is often such a feature.  (Policing is often available, but just dropping overrate traffic is what you're trying to avoid.)

What I would suggest is consulting your IOS version configuration guide's chapter on QoS features, for both your platforms, and see if shaping is offered.

If it's not, you're a bit stuck unless you interpose a more QoS feature rich device between your existing devices and the 5G link.