{
  "id": 19429564,
  "title": "Ye olde server consolidation has made Cisco push top-of-rack switching to 100G",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/10/ye-olde-server-consolidation-has-made-cisco-push-top-of-rack-19429564",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-11-10T23:25:37.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Register",
    "slug": "the-register",
    "url": "https://www.theregister.com/networks/2026/11/10/ye-olde-server-consolidation-has-made-cisco-push-top-of-rack-switching-to-100g/5308970"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Cisco has increased the speed of its top-of-rack switches to 100G as a result of consolidating servers. The company announced the N9348C8D-H2, a 1U device with 48 100G SFP-DD ports and eight 400G QSFP-DD uplinks, at the Cisco Live event in Melbourne, Australia. Kevin Wollenweber, Cisco’s senior vice president for datacenter and internet infrastructure, explained that the device was created due to modern servers featuring pairs of fast network interface cards. This is because recent server processors from Intel and AMD offer numerous physical cores, leading to increased traffic. To address this, servers are being replaced with more efficient sixth-generation chips, which has led to a significant reduction in server density. According to Cisco, users can achieve a 6:1 server consolidation ratio when upgrading from older processors to current models. While deploying these agents at scale will require highly automated networks, Cisco argues that humans will eventually learn to trust AI agents with more complex tasks.",
  "summary": "Newer server processors pack more cores into fewer boxes, creating a need for network speed",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}