Priority-Based Flow Control in Data Center Bridging: Benefits and Applications

Benefits of Priority-Based Flow Control in Data Center Bridging

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What is the benefit of the Priority-Based Flow control feature in Data Center Bridging?

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A. B. C. D.

A.

Data Center Bridging (DCB) is a set of Ethernet enhancements that help to improve the delivery of data traffic in data center environments. One of the features of DCB is Priority-Based Flow Control (PFC), which provides a mechanism for managing congestion in a network.

The benefit of PFC is that it allows network administrators to prioritize traffic based on its importance or criticality. PFC enables the network to manage a bursty, single traffic source on a multiprotocol link, which means that it can allocate more bandwidth to important traffic flows and ensure that they are delivered with lower latency and higher reliability.

PFC uses a pause frame mechanism to manage congestion. When a switch detects that congestion is starting to build up on a particular traffic flow, it sends a pause frame to the source of the traffic, which temporarily stops the transmission of packets. This allows the switch to catch up with the traffic and clear the congestion before resuming the transmission of packets.

In addition to providing better control over congestion, PFC also enables bandwidth management between different types of traffic. By using Quality of Service (QoS) policies to assign priorities to different types of traffic, network administrators can ensure that critical traffic flows receive the necessary bandwidth to meet their requirements.

Therefore, option B - enables bandwidth management between traffic types for multiprotocol links is an accurate benefit of the Priority-Based Flow control feature in Data Center Bridging. Options A and C are not accurate because PFC does not address bursty single traffic sources or sustained congestion by moving corrective action to the network edge. Option D is not accurate because PFC does not allow auto-exchange of Ethernet parameters between switches and endpoints.