Facebook introduced Backpack - the second generation of modular routers for data centers

The vector of development of the web of the last decade poses more and more complex tasks for engineers. With the increased speed of access to the Internet, video becomes the most popular content and, according to Facebook experts, by 2020, 75% of the traffic will fall on this type of content. Plus, as we know, the volume of data is growing exponentially and even the most modern equipment does not always cope effectively with its tasks.

A little earlier, Google faced its problem with its YouTube service, but for Facebook the situation is a bit different: video calls are growing in popularity, and VR technologies are on the verge of development, which social network attaches to the latter.
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Facebook has long gone beyond the social network alone and is actively investing in other projects. In addition to various services, Mark Zukenberg’s assets also include developments in data transmission. One of the results of this work was Backpack, the second generation of modular routers providing 100G throughput, as reported in the company's dev-blog .

A year and a half ago, in February 2015, Facebook introduced the first generation of self-developed modular switches.


"6-pack" of 2015

The modular Backpack router was designed specifically for 100G data centers. A reasonable question may arise: what is it about the 100G technology that began to emerge at the end of zero years, and in 2011-2013 it entered the telecommunications world en masse?

100G has been used on optical highways for several years now, providing the required channel width. However, transferring data at this speed to the data center is a completely different situation. Now data centers, for the most part, work on routers with a speed of 40G, which, in the future, will not be enough.

That is why Facebook engineers worked on creating equipment that will allow routing inside data centers at 100G speed.

One of the problems of implementing 100G routers is their cooling. Compared to 40G, 100G switches have more power and, accordingly, heat up much more strongly, which affects the energy efficiency of the data center.

Facebook director of software development Omar Baldonado commented on the upcoming modernization:

Imagine the "overclocking" of the gaming computer. We want to “play” at high speeds, but we need to do it in such a way that it is possible in all our data centers. We work with the ecosystem of the whole industry - manufacturers of servers, network adapters and fiber to get all the network elements of the required quality.

It’s hard to disagree with Baldonado: in the presence of “narrow” places in the infrastructure that the necessary speeds cannot support, the new Backpack is simply more voracious and “hot” routers with unused potential.

As in the case of 6-pack, Facebook will transfer its work on the Backpack Open Compute Project . Now the new product is gradually being introduced in all the data center of the company, while passing through many testing and testing procedures.