Monolithic or Spine-Leaf?

Diversified’s Chris Lapp shares his experience in designing IP architecture using SMPTE ST 2110 standards.

It’s hard to talk about SMPTE ST 2110 IP architecture design without hearing the term ‘spine and leaf’. It’s a fundamental decision that needs to be made early in the project and one that is not without compromise—so what needs to be considered?

In a recent episode of “The Summer Sessions” by The Broadcast Knowledge, brought to us by AIMS and the VSF, Diversified’s Chris Lapp—project engineer and routing subject matter expert—shares his experience in designing such systems. Typical monolithic design can cause some hurdles in network scaling and might not be as cost-efficient when looking to attach ‘low bandwidth’ devices.  Chris explains that the answer to these problems is spine and leaf, which is more resilient to failure and allows easy scaling while retaining a non-blocking network. Still, this solution doesn’t come without its own set of potential drawbacks.

Watch the full episode below.