I was lucky to work on a computer vision setup which involved NVIDIA RTX 6000 GPUs, Mellanox ONYX switches, and high-resolution cameras. The system was designed for real-time video capture and processing, pushing massive amounts of data through our network infrastructure. Here's a gist of debugging Mellanox switch metrics that led to some surprising discoveries about network traffic flow.
When monitoring network equipment like switches, routers, or network cards, you'll constantly encounter two metrics: RX and TX. These simple abbreviations are fundamental to understanding how data flows through your network, yet they often cause confusion. Let's demystify them with real-world examples from our production Mellanox ONYX switch.