IEEE Sets Sights on 100G Ethernet

coondoggie writes to mention a Network World article about the IEEE's new 100G Ethernet initiative. The organizing body's High Speed Study Group has voted to try for the 100G standard over other ideas, like 40Gbps ethernet. From the article: "The IEEE will work to standardize 100G Ethernet over distances as far as 6 miles over single-mode fiber optic cabling and 328 feet over multimode fiber. With the approval to move to 100G Ethernet, the next step is to form a 100G Ethernet Task Force to study how to achieve a standard that is technically feasible and economically viable, says John D'Ambrosia, chair of the IEEE HSSG, and scientist of components technology at Force10 Networks." With video download services and interactive media becoming ever more the focus of internet startups, the organization is eager to offer a way to aggregate pipes in the coming years. The current thinking is that achieving these speeds will be reached by advancing bonding techniques for 10G signals over multiple fibers.

Uplink

[GigsVT]

What I really want to see is higher uplink ports on SMB hardware.

Right now, if I want to make a medium size network using lower cost components, it might look something like 5- 24 port, 100-meg switches with 1 GB uplink to a big GB switch.

The bottleneck here is those uplinks. Each 100meg switch has plenty of backplane, and so does the gigabit switch, but those 100 meg 24 port switches have to share 1GB each to the backbone MDF.

So I really don't care about PCs or network cards or whatever, just give me 10GB links that I can use between switches without having to pay for overpriced Cisco crap.

Re:What's in it for desktop users?

[GigsVT]

Don't worry about content. We'll find plenty of things to fill that with.

Look at a platform like Second Life. It uses a very simplified version of CSG 3d modelling because of bandwidth constraints of current broadband. Now imagine Second Life with fully deformable meshes and high resolution textures in a world that is downloaded faster than you can move through it.

Anyway, we'll find plenty of things to do with more speed, we always do.

Its already done

[warrior_s]

Not exactly but Bell Labs did something like this in March http://www.lucent.com/press/0306/060308.coi.html [lucent.com]

Re:Uplink

[pacman on prozac]

You could use something supporting etherchannel and bond a few 1GB links together. We use that to great success, admittedly with using Cisco kit but there's plenty of other companies around making kit that supports channel bonding.

Incidently what are your users doing that maxes out gig uplinks? We have 96 ports sharing 2x1gig uplinks all over the office without problem, but none are particularly heavy traffic users.

Re:What's in it for desktop users?

[Znork]

Heck, with 100Gb ethernet, who says you have to _have_ PCIe; once you reach those speeds it would be entirely viable to move most PC components to their own ethernet bus/network. Imagine having your NVidia graphics units connected to your LAN and usable from any of your PC's; plugging another unit into the network makes it instantly accessible by all devices as tho it was more or less local hardware. Etc.

SAN is storage moving that way, we might very well expect other components to move in the same direction.

Of course, expect a horde of crap patent applications for shit like 'graphics acceleration _over a network_' just because the technology becomes feasible. Which may drive prices through the roof and/or hold development back a decade or five.

Re:Uplink

[WuphonsReach]

If you don't need VLANs or managed switches, try the "smart" switches which fill the niche between completely unmanaged and fully managed switches. Then you can get things like a 48-port gigabit smart switch for around $1500. Which gives you 40 ports for end-users and 8-ports for uplink or backbone use. Even some of the less expensive "smart" switches support VLANs, but you have to configure using a web browser.

They aren't the fastest things in the world, but at least they do trunking.

(Heck, I have a 16-port SMC smart gigabit switch that I picked up for around $240. Gigabit is definitely within reach.)