Network cards and switches

Switch basics

• What a network switch is
• Switch classes & form factors: fixed, modular, stackable, industrial, white-box
• Ports and uplinks
• Inside a switch: ASIC, SerDes, port groups, control plane
• Port types and cages: what fits where
• Port naming and LEDs across vendors
• Stacking, virtual chassis and MLAG
• Forwarding basics: VLANs, LAG, spanning tree, routing
• Switch roles and topologies: where each optic ends up
• Management plane: console, OOB, APIs, SNMP & telemetry for optics
• Selecting and commissioning a switch with optics in mind

Network interface cards

• NICs with optical ports: an overview
• NIC ports, speeds and PCIe bandwidth
• Transceiver compatibility on NICs: driver whitelists
• NIC tools and diagnostics: reading a module from the server
• SmartNICs and DPUs: optics on programmable adapters

Vendors & network OS

• Vendors and their OS
• Network operating systems: a field guide
• Transceiver summaries
• OEM part numbers: how vendors name optics

Transceiver compatibility

• Vendor lock & coding
• Verifying optics on a switch
• Port configuration recipes per NOS: speed, FEC, breakout, overrides
• How each NOS validates a module
• Compatibility matrices, release notes & firmware changes

Electrical interfaces: MII family & AUIs

• Media-independent interfaces: the electrical side of the port
• MII, RMII, GMII, RGMII: parallel interfaces to the PHY
• SGMII, 1000BASE-X, QSGMII, USXGMII: serial interfaces to PHYs & SFP
• XGMII, XAUI, XFI/SFI and the AUI family: 10G to 800G