Corporate Data Centers As Ethernet's Next Frontier

alphadogg writes with a story that's about the possibilities for the next generation(s) of Ethernet, stuff far beyond 10base-T: "Ethernet has conquered much of the network world and is now headed deep into the data center to handle everything from storage to LAN to high-performance computing applications. Cisco, IBM and other big names are behind standards efforts, and while there is some dispute over exactly what to call this technology, vendors seem to be moving ahead with it, and it's already showing up in pre-standard products. 'I don't see any show-stoppers here — it's just time,' says one network equipment-maker rep. 'This is just another evolutionary step. Ethernet worked great for mundane or typical applications — now we're getting to time-sensitive applications and we need to have a little bit more congestion control in there.'"

what am I missing with this article?

[poetmatt]

FTA: "But in its current state, Ethernet is not optimized to provide the service required for storage and high-performance computing traffic -- speed alone won't cut it, vendors say. Ethernet, which drops packets when traffic congestion occurs, needs to evolve into a low latency, "lossless" transport technology with congestion management and flow control features, CEE and DCE backers say."

If I understand right, they're trying to change Ethernet because of TCP/IP? Isn't that kinda, backwards as a concept?

Re:Hmm...

[Yetihehe]

No more USB cables with a million different connector types.

You realise "no more different connector types" was the reasoning with USB?

Re:We could add a "token" and make it a "ring"!

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Something new won't sell. People wont adopt revolutionary products as easily as they will adopt incremental upgrades with a known and trusted brand. So calling it "Uber-fiber hyper gylde" won't sell as well as "Ethernet v10".

People will deal with confusion. They deal with it all the time. Its the only way they know to deal with the walrus.

Re:Hmm...

[Grey_14]

And sadly, you'd see the same issues it with this standard too, because an ethernet RJ-45 plug isn't appropriate to plug into a cell phone, digital camera or mp3 player, but a 5-pin mini-connector isn't appropriate to run 25 feet to a switch/router either.

Re:The core concept is ... problematic.

[TheRaven64]

It sounds like they just want bandwidth reservation and isochronous transfers on Ethernet. Something that would establish a virtual circuit and then not drop frames. Something with an Asynchronous Transfer Mode, perhaps?

Re:Umm

[marcosdumay]

You probably don't have a storage area network, running over some proprietary fiber protocol, or some hight performance proprietary cluster, or a supercomputer around, do you? All those things are fading out as Ethernet evolves to do those kinds of jobs, but they didn't disapear yet.

Re:Hmm...

[mollymoo]

Quite a few of the non-standard USB leads use non-standard connectors because they're actually USB-serial converters, not just leads. My previous phone, a Sony Ericsson, was like that.

Re:Hmm...

[atomic brainslide]

Ethernet has nothing to do with the connector type. It is a layer 2 protocol that sits on top of the physical transport medium. There is a little bit of overlap with things like wiring specs for distances and attenuation, but it ethernet itself doesn't really care what plugs or wires you use. even if connectors were in the spect, it would still likely be extended to allow for new connector types to fit the appropriate devices (mobile phones, mp3 players, etc).

thus, for the consumer world you probably wouldn't see much difference on the user end. developers, on the other hand, would have to start pushing their device drivers into the network stack in order to get them working. say hello to firewalls and IDS/IPS on your HDD and video card.