Ethernet's 400-Gigabit Challenge Is a Good Problem To Have 75
alphadogg writes "As it embarks on what's likely to be a long journey to its next big increase in speed, Ethernet is in some ways a victim of its own success. Years ago, birthing a new generation of Ethernet was relatively straightforward: Enterprises wanted faster LANs, vendors figured out ways to achieve that throughput and hashed out a standard, and IT shops bought the speed boost with their next computers and switches. Now it's more complicated, with carriers, Web 2.0 giants, cloud providers, and enterprises all looking for different speeds and interfaces, some more urgently than others. ... That's what the IEEE 802.3 400Gbps Study Group faces as it tries to write the next chapter in Ethernet's history. ... 'You have a lot of different people coming in to the study group,' said John D'Ambrosia, the group's chair, in an interview at the Ethernet Alliance's Technology Exploration Forum in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday. That can make it harder to reach consensus, with 75 percent approval required to ratify a standard, he said."
Needs more context (Score:1, Interesting)
So whats the problem? Fitting more bandwidth onto a CAT5 cable? I feel like the summary needs more context.
Re:Needs more context (Score:0, Interesting)
But we already have 10, 40 and 100gbps cables. Why 400x1?
Also cat5 is pretty antiquated for the folks who need these speeds. Nobody is really even doing 10gigE over cat5 (incl 6,7,8) for more than tiny patch cables. Fiber is fairly cheap.
Re:Needs more context (Score:4, Interesting)
Nobody is really even doing 10gigE over cat5 (incl 6,7,8) for more than tiny patch cables. Fiber is fairly cheap.
Your sort of right, but completely wrong. The majority of the 10G ports previously sold are SFP based, but with 10G optical SFPs running ~$80 the vast majority of those ports have direct attach copper cables (CU/CR/CX1/ whatever you want to call it).
Because of this, the growth direction seems to be towards 10Gbase-T which can do 100 meters over cat6A driving the per port costs down significantly over SFP based solutions. Frankly, with the 10G uptake as a server interconnect, 40G is a good "low cost" switch interconnect/long haul medium. Again killing the need for 10G SFP solutions.