Arista Networks > Case Studies > Arista's Scalable Solution Enhances Taboola's Content Delivery with Advanced Network Architecture

Arista's Scalable Solution Enhances Taboola's Content Delivery with Advanced Network Architecture

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Country

Worldwide

Product

Arista 7280 Switches
Arista 7160 Switches
Arista EOS®

Tech Stack

Layer 3 Spine and Leaf Architecture
Software Defined Networking

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Energy Saving
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Networks & Connectivity - Ethernet
Networks & Connectivity - Software-Defined Networking
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Private Cloud

Applicable Industries

Software
Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Edge Computing & Edge Intelligence

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

About The Customer

Taboola is the world's largest discovery platform, used by many of the world's largest publishers and brands. Over a billion people interact with Taboola's content discovery platform every month. The company has experienced rapid growth over the last five years, generating over 30 billion recommendations each day. Taboola operates global sites with thousands of physical servers and international network connectivity. The company uses a mix of its own infrastructure and private cloud to scale up its business and be as close to the markets it serves as possible. With continued growth, Taboola needed to upgrade its core networking capability to support its innovative applications and orchestration software.

The Challenge

Taboola, the world's largest discovery platform, faced a challenge in upgrading its network capabilities to support the delivery of over 360 billion recommendations a month. With global sites and thousands of physical servers, Taboola needed to move away from simple layer 2 switching to a more intelligent layer 3 architecture. The existing network switching architecture was becoming a bottleneck, and there was a need for more performance and scalability from 10Gbps to 25Gbps per server, along with 100G uplinks. Simplified management capability and the ability to perform real-time upgrades to switches without major engineering projects were also required. Additionally, Taboola was exploring software-defined networking and internal clouds but wanted to maintain flexibility and avoid vendor lock-in.

The Solution

Taboola evaluated several solutions and ultimately selected Arista Networks for a major network upgrade. Arista's solution included the deployment of Arista 7280 and 7160 switches at four sites, moving to a leaf and spine network topology. This architecture provided dynamic and deep buffering for lossless forwarding, high density, internet-scale table sizes, and comprehensive L2 and L3 features. Arista's 100Gbps uplinks were used to connect two sites over a few kilometers of dark fiber, offering an alternative to the existing WDM network. The upgrade allowed Taboola to move servers almost transparently and upgrade directly from 10Gbps to 100Gbps per port where needed. Arista's solution provided flexibility, cost efficiency, and scalability, enabling Taboola to become more DevOps-centric and avoid vendor lock-in.

Operational Impact

Taboola moved to a layer 3 spine and leaf architecture, increasing network flexibility.
The company upgraded from 10Gbps to 25Gbps network interfaces, enhancing server bandwidth.
Arista's solution offered a higher density with lower power consumption, ready for future cloud projects.
The network upgrade resulted in lower latency and higher reliability, scaling to a 100Gbps network design.
Taboola is in the process of moving bespoke applications into a private cloud for internal use.

Quantitative Benefit