Queue scheduling discipline where each queue has a weight and is assigned a different percentage of output port bandwidth. WFQ supports variable-length packets so that flows with larger packets are not allocated more bandwidth than flows with smaller packets.

WFQ classifies traffic as high- or low-bandwidth with low-bandwidth traffic getting priority and high-bandwidth traffic sharing what is left over. If traffic bursts ahead of the rate at which the interface can transmit, new high-bandwidth traffic is discarded after a congestive-messages threshold has been reached.

WFQ provides preferential treatment for higher priority traffic while preventing total starvation of lower priority traffic under sustained overload conditions.

Congestion avoidance mechanism which prevents an output queue from ever filling to capacity. WRED provides separate thresholds and weights for different IP precedences, allowing you to provide different qualities of service in regard to packet dropping for different traffic types. Standard traffic may be dropped more frequently than premium traffic during periods of congestion.

Queue scheduling discipline that supports flows with significantly different bandwidth requirements. Each queue can be assigned a weight that is relative to other queues. WRR ensures that lower-priority queues are not denied access to buffer space and output port bandwidth. At least one packet is removed from each queue during each service round.

In computer hardware, a white box is a server without a well-known brand name made from commonly available parts. White box switches are like white box servers, offering low cost without the brand name or tight integration of silicon and network software features.

Traditional black box switches are built with vertically integrated hardware and software. Some vendors use custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) components to boost performance and add features, which adds to the cost. A white box switch decouples the software from the switching hardware. By decoupling software and hardware, customers have more flexibility and can potentially change software without changing hardware.

A white box switch runs a network operating system on generic x86 hardware with “merchant silicon” chipsets from manufacturers such as Broadcom, Centec, Intel, Marvell, and Mellanox. White box switches rely on an operating system such as Linux to integrate the Layer 2 (L2)/Layer 3 (L3) networking functions.

White box switches do not have the same complex features as black box switches because most interact with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) controllers to make forwarding and control plane decisions from a centralized point for all switches in the network. The SDN controller uses a southbound API to program the forwarding table of the white box switches.

Some vendors sell a complete white box solution with the operating system already installed, while others supply just the “bare-metal” switch and you buy the operating system direct from the software vendor.

A network that provides communication services to a geographic area larger than that served by a Local Area Network (LAN) and that may use or provide public communication facilities.

The ability of a device to achieve throughput equal to the maximum throughput of a communication standard.