100 Gbps Use Cases Explained: Real Workloads That Justify Extreme Bandwidth

Summary and key takeaways

100 Gbps is not just faster, it removes a whole class of bottlenecks. If you run media delivery, AI pipelines, or cross site analytics, a 100 Gbps uplink turns fragile, latency sensitive workflows into predictable, repeatable operations.

• Handles traffic spikes without throttling or buffering
• Feeds GPU clusters at line rate, shortening training and ingest
• Makes cross continent replication and real time analytics practical

Where 100 Gbps fits best

Media delivery and CDN origins

Live events and viral content can push traffic from thousands to hundreds of thousands of viewers in minutes. A 100 Gbps origin absorbs those surges while keeping startup time low and bitrate high. Private interconnects to your CDN or eyeball networks keep egress spend predictable and performance stable.

• Smooth playback for HD and 4K at scale
• Enough headroom to transcode and serve in the same footprint when needed

AI and data pipelines

Modern models are data hungry. Moving multi terabyte shards from feature stores to GPU nodes can starve accelerators on slower links. With 100 Gbps, input pipelines keep up with training, and distributed jobs spend less time blocked on parameter exchange.

• Faster epoch times and shorter end to end training cycles
• Lower idle time on expensive accelerators

Data replication and backup

Recovery points shrink when you can push deltas quickly. Regional copies, analytics lakes, and cold archives all benefit from high throughput windows, especially across higher RTT links.

• Replicate petabytes in practical maintenance windows
• Reduce recovery point and recovery time objectives

Enterprise and cloud interconnects

Hybrid architectures rely on steady, high volume flows. A 100 Gbps on ramp smooths bulk migrations, real time telemetry, and collaboration traffic, with consistent performance for microservice chatter and caches.

• Predictable large scale transfers to and from cloud
• Lower tail latency for chatty, distributed systems

Capacity planning quick math

Back of the envelope figures help set expectations. Adjust for codec, protocol, and overhead.

• 4K at 20 Mbps on 100000 Mbps yields about 5000 concurrent viewers
• 4K at 25 Mbps yields about 4000 viewers
• 8K at 80 Mbps yields about 1250 viewers
• Bulk copy ideal rate is about 12.5 GB per second, a 3 TB dataset can move in roughly 4 to 6 minutes after overhead

Choosing a link tier

• 10 Gbps, about 1.25 GB per second, fit for small VOD origins, nightly backups, lab clusters
• 40 Gbps, about 5 GB per second, fit for regional CDN nodes, mid size GPU farms, faster disaster recovery
• 100 Gbps, about 12.5 GB per second, fit for global events, large AI training and inference, petabyte scale replication

Getting production ready

Robust 100 Gbps performance comes from end to end tuning, not ports alone.

Network stack and NICs

Set tcp_rmem and tcp_wmem appropriately, test BBR and CUBIC, and consider jumbo frames across the full path. Enable RSS, RPS, RFS, GRO, and GSO where they help. Tune interrupt coalescing, pin IRQs, and confirm your NIC has enough PCIe lanes to sustain line rate.

Data path and processes

Stripe NVMe volumes, choose filesystems that handle parallel I/O well, and split large transfers across multiple workers rather than a single stream. For specialized cases, evaluate io_uring or DPDK to cut overhead.

Observability and placement

Graph goodput versus line rate, retransmits, queue depth, and CPU softirq time. Test across realistic RTTs. Place workloads in facilities with the right peers and IXPs, avoid hairpin routes, and prefer direct interconnects to clouds and partners for steady performance.

Video: A $15,000 network switch – 100GbE networking

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18xtogjz5Ow

Conclusion

100 Gbps turns formerly impractical tasks into routine operations. It lets you serve big audiences smoothly, feed GPUs at speed, and replicate data globally within realistic windows.

• Scale and reliability for unpredictable load
• Shorter AI and ETL cycles through higher ingest rates
• Better economics when bandwidth is unmetered and predictable

Contact sales to map your workload to port speed, location, and peering.