Networking - ESUN _ Ethernet for Scale-Up Networking - Workstream - (2026-03-26)

Why It Matters

The profile proposal balances rapid ecosystem adoption with a migration path for advanced flow-control features, impacting vendor interoperability, procurement decisions, and how quickly lossless and advanced congestion controls roll out in scale-up datacenter networks.

Summary

Participants debated whether LR and CBFC flow-control features should be mandatory in the Ethernet for Scale-up Networking (ESON/ENS) spec. The group noted LR/CBFC are optional for endpoints today and making them mandatory for switches could shrink the initial ecosystem because many current switches already support ESON header-based forwarding and PFC without LR/CBFC. Meg proposed introducing two switch profiles for EON 1.1: a base profile (header forwarding + PFC) to broaden initial vendor support and an extended profile (adds LR and CBFC) with a note that newer generations should support the extended profile. Stakeholders agreed the profile approach preserves optionality for deployments that may avoid LR due to potential performance trade-offs.

Original Description

Public call recording of Networking - ESUN _ Ethernet for Scale-up Networking workstream.