[Beowulf] switching capacity terminology confusion

[Rahul Nabar]

I was totally confused on the spec sheet (one example link below) for
switches. What is the difference between "Switching Fabric Capacity
288Gbps" and "User traffic capacity 176 Gbps"? The user traffic
numbers seem to be a lot lower than the switching fabric numbers. Is
this some sort of overhead? Or.....

If this weren't enough there is another mysterious number: "Stacking
Capacity 96 Gbps"  which is even lower than the others. How does one
interpret all of these. I started out with my simplistic view of "a
gigabit eth switch that supports full line capacity on all ports"


http://www.force10networks.com/products/pdf/Force10-S25N-S50N-FTOS.pdf

-- 
Rahul