When the network switch interface receives more traffic than it can handle, the network switch chooses to either cache it or the network switch discards it.

Network switches are usually cached because of different network interface speed caused by the sudden burst of network switch traffic or many-to-one traffic.

The most common problem that triggers network switch buffering is the sudden change of many-to-one traffic. For example, an application builds on multiple server cluster nodes. If one of the nodes requests data from all other network switches at all nodes at the same time, all replies should arrive at the network switch at the same time. When this happens, floods of traffic from all network switches flood the requester's network switch ports. If the network switch does not have enough exit buffers, the network switch may discard some traffic or the network switch may increase application latency. Enough network switch buffers prevent packet loss or network latency due to low-level protocols.

The most modern data center switching platform addresses this issue by sharing the exchange cache of network switches. Network switch has a buffer pool space allocated to a specific port. Network switch shared exchange cache varies greatly from vendor to vendor.

Some network switch vendors sell network switches designed for specific environments. For example, some network switches have a large buffer handling and are suitable for Hadoop environments with many-to-one delivery scenarios. Network Switches In environments that are capable of distributing traffic, network switches do not need to deploy buffers at the switch level.

Network switch buffer is very important, but how many network switches we really need space, but no correct answer. A huge network switch buffer means that the network does not discard any traffic, and it also means increased network switch latency - waiting for data stored by the network switch to be forwarded before being forwarded. Some network administrators prefer smaller network switch buffers to reduce application or protocol traffic. The correct answer is to understand the traffic patterns of your application's network switches and choose the network switches that fit those needs.