Flat Datacenter Networks at Scale at Amazon
Summary
James Hamilton's Perspectives post surveys RNG (Resilient Network Graphs) as a flat datacenter network design used by AWS. It traces the lineage from expander graphs to Jellyfish and VL2, then details the RNG trio: Spraypoint for routing, ShuffleBox for cabling, and operations tooling. The article cites real-world deployments and contrasts RNG with fat-tree architectures, highlighting substantial improvements as well as operational and stochastic performance considerations.