A cost comparison of datacenter network architectures

There is a growing body of research exploring new network architectures for the data center. These proposals all seek to improve the scalability and cost-effectiveness of current data center networks, but adopt very different approaches to doing so. For example, some proposals build networks entirely out of switches while others do so using a combination of switches and servers. How do these different network architectures compare? For that matter, by what metrics should we even begin to compare these architectures? Understanding the tradeoffs between different approaches is important both for operators making deployment decisions and to guide future research. In this paper, we take a first step toward understanding the tradeoffs between different data center network architectures. We use high-level models of different classes of data center networks and compare them on cost using both current and predicted trends in cost and power consumption.