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Systems & Data Center · Foundational

Top-of-Rack Switching (ToR)

A cabling design in which one or two access switches mounted in each rack connect that rack's servers with short cables.

Definition

ToR reduces cabling and supports modular deployment, with fiber uplinks to aggregation or spine switches. End-of-row (EoR) and middle-of-row designs instead place switches in a dedicated rack serving a whole row via longer horizontal cabling.

Example

Each rack has two 25/100 GbE leaf switches at the top, uplinked to the spine.

Exam tip

ToR minimizes copper runs but adds switches to manage; EoR centralizes switches per row.

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