How big is the 10Gbps bandwidth of the US server? Visualize the 10Gbps transmission channel for you
"US server bandwidth 10Gbps" represents the data transmission capacity of 10 billion bits per second, which is equivalent to the actual effective throughput of 1.25GB/s. This parameter is not determined by the number of a single channel, but the result of the synergy of network interface technology, transmission protocol and hardware. This article combines physical layer implementation and network architecture to fully explain how big the 10G bandwidth is?
In the data center network architecture, "US server bandwidth 10Gbps" represents the data transmission capacity of 10 billion bits per second, which is equivalent to the actual effective throughput of 1.25GB/s. This parameter is not determined by the number of a single channel, but the result of the synergy of network interface technology, transmission protocol and hardware.
1. Technical clarification of the concept of channel
There is a certain essential difference between physical channels and logical channels. Physical channels refer to the number of physical transmission media, such as:
10GBASESR optical fiber uses 2 cores (1 each for sending/receiving), and 10GBASET twisted pair requires 4 pairs of copper wires (8 cores).
Logical channels reflect protocol layer abstraction: 10G Ethernet is a single logical channel technology, and 40G/100G is achieved through channel bonding (such as 100GBASESR4 uses 4x25G channels).
Bandwidth calculation formula:
Actual throughput = nominal bandwidth × coding efficiency protocol overhead
10Gbps × 0.968 (64B/66B coding) Ethernet header overhead ≈ 9.4Gbps payload
2. Implementation of 10Gbps bandwidth
Comparison of mainstream interface technologies
| Type | Physical medium | Transmission distance | Channel characteristics |
| 10GBASESR | OM3 multimode fiber | 300m | Dual-fiber bidirectional (2 physical channels) |
| 10GBASELR | OS2 single-mode fiber | 10km | Dual-fiber bidirectiona(2 physical channels) |
| 10GBASET | Cat6a/Cat7 twisted pair | 100m | Four-pair full-duplex (8 physical channels) |
| SFP+ DAC | High-speed copper cable | 7m | Direct connection without photoelectric conversion |
Internal channel bottlenecks in US servers, such as PCIe 3.0 x8 channels provide 7.88GB/s bandwidth (≈63Gbps), which can carry 6 10G network cards. PCIe 4.0 x4 channels can meet the 10Gbps requirement (7.88GB/s). Memory bandwidth needs to match: DDR43200 six channels provide >150GB/s, which is much higher than network throughput.
3. Key factors for performance achievement
Network protocol optimization, TSO/LRO offload transfers packet fragmentation/reassembly tasks to the network card, reducing CPU usage by 30%; RDMA technology implements direct memory access through RoCEv2, reducing latency from 100μs to 5μs, and DPDK acceleration bypasses the kernel protocol stack to increase packet processing capacity to 80Mpps.
Hardware configuration benchmarks include CPU requirements of Xeon Silver 4210-level processors, supporting SRIOV virtualization. Memory configuration requires ≥8GB RAM per 10G port (to process 1500MTU packets). Storage supporting NVMe SSD arrays with continuous read and write speeds of ≥1.2GB/s to prevent storage from becoming a bottleneck.
Performance degradation in real environment
| Interference factors | Throughput reduction | Solution |
| Small packet transmission (64 bytes) | 40%-60% | Enable NIC RSS multi-queue |
| Virtual machine network virtualization | 30%-50% | Deploy SRIOV or smart NIC |
| Category 5e cable (Cat5e) | More than 70% | Replace Cat6a and above standard cables |
4. Application scenarios and architecture practices
The topology design of the core layer deployment of the data center is generally that each leaf switch in the leaf-spine architecture is configured with 4×10G uplink, and the blocking ratio is controlled at 3:1.
Traffic engineering:
# Configure ECMP to achieve multi-path load
switch(config)# portchannel loadbalance srcdstip
Cloud service and virtualization scenarios
VMware vSphere configuration recommendations:
2×10G NICs are allocated to each vSphere host (management + virtual machine traffic separation)
Enable Network I/O Control on vSwitch to ensure bandwidth for key services
Container network solution:
Calico BGP mode enables 10G communication between Pods
Cilium eBPF acceleration reduces network latency by 45%
High-performance computing cluster
InfiniBand FDR solution (56Gbps) and 10G Ethernet hybrid deployment
MPI job communication optimization:
# Set OpenMPI network parameters
mpirun mca btl_openib_allow_ib 1 np 128 ./applicationA supercomputing center measured that it took 3.2 minutes to transmit a 1TB data set over 10G Ethernet
Evolution trend and cost control
Smooth upgrade to 25G/100G, the same SFP28 interface is compatible with 10G/25G, and the optical module can be replaced to upgrade. 100G uses 4×25G channel bonding to retain the existing fiber infrastructure.
Energy-saving technology applications enable EEE (Energy Efficient Ethernet) technology, reducing energy consumption by 60% during idle periods.
TCO optimization strategy
| Components | Cost share | Optimization solution |
| Network card | 15% | Using OCP standard network card reduces costs by 30% |
| Optical module | 40% | Deploying BiDi single-fiber module reduces fiber costs by 50% |
| Cabling system | 25% | Pre-terminated fiber system saves 70% deployment time |
Before implementing a 10G network, three elements need to be verified: end-to-end path (network card switch media matching), protocol offload capability (TSO/RDMA support), and monitoring system (SNMP+NetFlow). In financial trading systems, it is recommended to use active-active 10G links, and RoCE should be deployed in scenarios with latency requirements <100μs. With the implementation of the 800G standard in 2025, the current 10G architecture should reserve the ability to evolve to 25G/100G to avoid repeated investment.
From the above content, it seems that the realization of 10Gbps bandwidth needs to pay attention to three cores. On the physical layer, 10Gbps can be bound through a single channel or multiple channels; the number of logical channels depends on the transmission protocol, such as 10G Ethernet is a single logical channel; the actual throughput is subject to the US server architecture, such as the number of PCIe channels will limit the performance of the network card.
