What would happen if you have an access layer switch with a 10 Gbps uplink and 1 Gbps downlinks and 1 machine (behind one of the 1 Gbps ports) would be attacked by a 10 Gbps UDP flood type attack? Will the switch accept the whole 10 Gbps of traffic and pass only 1 Gbps to the downlink and have its uplink saturated or only let 1 Gbps pass through, so that the uplink isn't congested (10% used)? I'm trying to find out what would happen in case a 10 Gbps network attack targets one machine connected at 1 Gbps to a switch having a 10 Gbps uplink. Thanks.
Switch – What happens to switch with 1 Gbps downlinks and 10 Gbps uplink in case of 10 Gbps attack
switch
Best Answer
In a typical scenario, the switch has no way to tell the upstream device to stop sending it so much. So it will receive 10Gbps from upstream. Obviously it can only send 1Gbps downstream. So it will send 1Gbps downstream. Of the remaining 9Gbps, a few packets will probably be buffered and the rest will be dropped by the switch.