In Huawei data center networking, especially within Intelligent Lossless Data Center Network design, incast traffic is a well-known challenge in distributed systems such as AI computing clusters and distributed storage architectures .
In an incast scenario , a large number of servers simultaneously send traffic to a single destination (e.g., parameter server in AI training or storage node in distributed storage). This sudden aggregation of traffic can quickly overflow switch buffers , leading to packet loss, increased latency, and throughput degradation .
Huawei identifies incast as a primary cause of network congestion in modern data centers. To mitigate this, CloudFabric solutions implement advanced congestion control technologies such as:
PFC (Priority Flow Control) to prevent packet loss
ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification) for early congestion signaling
AI-driven traffic scheduling and load balancing
These mechanisms help build a lossless Ethernet fabric , which is essential for RDMA-based AI workloads and high-performance storage systems.
Therefore, the statement is TRUE , as incast traffic is indeed prone to causing congestion in such environments.