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The default operating mode of the Nexus 3548 is what we call Normal Mode. In this mode, the Nexus 3548 is extremely feature rich and scalable, while forwarding packets at ultra low latencies of about 250 nanoseconds.

For those customers where latency is everything, the device can be globally configured for Warp Mode. In this mode, the latency is slashed to 190ns, and the main difference is the table sizes of the device are reduced to a level that is still higher than the typical configuration mode for financial trading applications, with 4000 unicast routes, 8000 multicast routes, and 8000 hosts.

No matter what the global mode of the Nexus 3548 is, Normal or Warp, customers can take advantage of an innovative feature called Warp SPAN. In this mode, all traffic entering the switch on a single 10G port (port 36 to be exact) is copied to a configurable set of egress ports at a never before seen latency of 50ns or less. Best of all, the traffic entering port 36 of the switch still passes through the normal forwarding pipeline, so this interface can be used to establish peering adjacencies with upstream providers. This feature is ideal for the efficient delivery of multicast stock market data to a set of servers commonly referred to as “feed handlers”.