Rick and Vinit:   Thank you so much, guys. Really appreciate it. I will review the material and hopefully it will all be crystal clear for me. I rated all your posts.  ... View more

Thanks, Julio. I did find out what was behind my client's thinking: he wanted to avoid running STP instances for SVIs.  ... View more

OK, that may be the case and you have thus differentiated the two from a management perspective. But what are your thoughts insofar as the differentiation I made? I was specifically addressing the constructs themselves - as in, what are they... [EDIT] So, in a SoC scenario, all the buffers are on the hardware ASIC and are provided by the ASIC - so all the buffers are "hardware buffers," per se. But the so-called "hardware queue" is statically assigned and part of the design of the interface circuitry on the chip itself and, as you put it (and I think I agree because it sounds right), managed by the embedded code on the ASIC. On the other hand. the so-called "software queues" are implemented (read: assigned) and managed by the IOS (in the case of Cisco, of course)... would you agree with this description?[EDIT] ... View more

Thanks, folks...so allow a follow-up question, please.  What exactly is a hardware queue and how does it differ from a software queue? In the end, a queue is an abstraction that is implemented using memory buffers. Hardware queue or software queue, what we are talking about are "cells" of memory that are carved out the system's overall memory - perhaps DRAM. So what differentiates the hardware queue from the so-called software queue? Moreover, yes, a switch has hardware queues that are provided by the ASIC and a router has a FIFO hardware queue (Tx Ring) that is the last stage before serialization on the outbound wire. So, what is the difference between those hardware queues, if any? My thoughts are the following: what is actually meant by "hardware queue" is the fact that the buffer (memory cell) is permanently assigned to the interface and is not configurable - it's just there and it is static. Moreover, the buffer is an addressable memory construct that the queue points to.On the other hand, a so-called "software queue" is also implemented or created by the assignment of addressable buffer memory (memory cells) but it is done dynamically through CLI configuration via the administrator. BUT, IN THE END, HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE QUEUEING, WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT ARE MEMORY BUFFERS that are either permanently carved out, as in the case of the former, or dynamically assigned to an interface, as in the case of the latter.  Thoughts? ... View more

Hi... I'm not sure I understand that answer... can you or someone else elaborate more? The answer creates more questions than it answers... ... View more