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10-Gigabit Ethernet Standard Approved

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the faster-pr0n dept.

A little birdie brings news that that 802.3ae standard for 10 Gigabit/second Ethernet has been approved. Everyone out there with Gigabit Ethernet - you are now officially obsolete. The new standard is fiber only, no more of that nasty copper stuff.

139 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. Approved != Affordable by CodeMonky · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Approved or not it will still be some time before costs come down enough so that comapnies can justify replacing their gig backbone with 10gig.

    --
    --"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
    1. Re:Approved != Affordable by ajvtoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Be good for education and research though. JANET is planning to be 10Gbps on the core by late-Summer so they'll be pleased the standard has been approved (see http://www.ja.net/superjanet/index.html)

    2. Re:Approved != Affordable by Cmdr+Taco+(luser) · · Score: 2

      Gigabit?

      Hell, where I work, we're still patting ourselves of the back for getting rid of that rotten old coax. We'll probably be languishing in 100Base-T land for a while yet.

      The early adopters of 10Gb ethernet are certain to be:
      Universities
      e-Commerce/ISP outfits
      Large corporation's data centers

      There is still plenty of life left in gigabit ethernet. In fact, it is still just gaining momentum.

      --
      All things in moderation.
  2. not obsolete by Mortin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    considering hdds can hardly transfer at 1gbps, gigabit is hardly obsolete... yet :)

    1. Re:not obsolete by larien · · Score: 4, Informative
      One word: striping. If you put enough disks in, you can get more than 1gbps out of a disk array. Realistically, though, you're limited to using this in two places:
      1. Large server with many, many disk controllers and even more disks
      2. Network backbones
      It'll creep in to the second quickly enough (once Cisco et al support it in hardware), I'd imagine (we already have a 4gbps backbone using 4 gigabit lines in our site) and the former will start happening at the top-end installations of E15K's and the like.
    2. Re:not obsolete by GeckoUK · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are correct, but only in the case were you have a network of two computers.

      In the real world a company deploying this is likely to have hundreds if not thousands of machines all connected at once.

    3. Re:not obsolete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      not too many people would hook up a single box to a 10GB pipe (although many of us would like to). who knows - it might happen eventually!

    4. Re:not obsolete by GigsVT · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We're going to need something to replace PCI before we can use 10Gbit ethernet fully though. Even 64bit 66Mhz PCI has a max (in theory) of 528 Megabytes/sec.

      On a side note, I have sucessfully pulled 130Mbytes/sec out of 5400 RPM IDE Disks on 3ware controllers, with a cost less than $9000. 3 controllers, 24 disks, 64 bit 33Mhz PCI. RAID 0 over 5. So the potential is there to exceed current GigE, without too many disks or controllers, or getting too expensive.

      It would also help a lot if we could get regular gigabit ethernet working well first. I think there was a story here on Slashdot not long ago that showed that most GigE cards had trouble pushing over 400Mbits even with large frames. Only the expensive $500 one came close to it's full potential (900Mbits). My experience is that without jumbo frames, there is hardly any advantage with lower end GigE cards.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    5. Re:not obsolete by Ogun · · Score: 3, Informative

      Oh, you mean like this:
      Cisco 12000 10Gb line card
      or like this:
      Catalyst 6500 10Gb line card

      Cisco did announce these a while ago.

      --
      I found a fast warez site: http://warez.it.kth.se
    6. Re:not obsolete by questionlp · · Score: 5, Informative

      The highest speed PCI-X (64-bit @ 133Mhz) is capable of reaching ~1GByte/sec which is just about the speed of 10 Gig Ethernet. There was/is the promise of Araphoe (sp?) that resembles AMD's HyperTransport but would be used for expansion cards rather than a chip-to-chip pathway.

      The other bottleneck with even high-end Intel-based servers could easily choke when dealing with not only 10 Gig Ethernet but also add Fiber Channel, multiple channels of Ultra 160 or Ultra 320 SCSI RAID, etc., since the memory bandwidth (and processor bus speed?) would then become the possibly the next bottleneck. RISC servers don't have that much of a problem just yet, but sooner or later it will be.

    7. Re:not obsolete by 13Echo · · Score: 2

      I can pull around 90MB/s off of my dual 7200 RPM drive RAID array. I could imagine that 4 striped standard ATA drives could do well over 130-150 MB/s making full use of gigabit ethernet on a fast bust and fast ethernet card.

    8. Re:not obsolete by monkeydo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Please put down the CCNA study guide and back away slowly. Ever since the invention of switches most people haven't had to worry about collisions. We're talking about full duplex, 2 hosts on a collision domain. In other words no collisions. If you are getting collisions on GigE or switched FastE you are doing something very wrong.

      --
      Si vis pacem, para bellum
      The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
    9. Re:not obsolete by _|()|\| · · Score: 2
      We're going to need something to replace PCI before we can use 10Gbit ethernet fully though.

      If a network has more than two nodes, as most networks do, then each node isn't expected to saturate the network. Think of adding more lanes to highway, rather than increasing the speed limit.

    10. Re:not obsolete by ivan256 · · Score: 2

      I've seen system controllers that had the memory controller, CPU bus, and 10 gigabit ethernet in the same chip. If you can get 10 gigabit to memory, you can use all the bandwidth. At least in bursts...

    11. Re:not obsolete by cheezedawg · · Score: 2, Funny

      We're going to need something to replace PCI before we can use 10Gbit ethernet fully though.

      Good point. We need something like 3GIO. Plus something has to be done about the bandwidth between the northbridge and the southbride. Right now it is at 266 MB/sec with plans to increase to 533 MB/sec.

      --
      "The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
    12. Re:not obsolete by questionlp · · Score: 2, Informative
      Oops... forgot to mention that the currently available chipsets that support one or more PCI-X busses include the Intel E7500 and the ServerWorks Grand Champion (GC) series (either the HE or the LE, depending on the number of processors required).

      The "northbridge" of the Intel E7500 supports two PCI-X busses (more information about the chipset can be found here.

      The ServerWorks GC series support for PCI-X start from 2 independent busses (the GC-SL) up to six PCI-X busses (the GC-HE). Specs on the ServerWorks stuff is located here.

      I'm not completely sure if the AMD Hammer chipsets will include PCI-X support initially, but if one were to give up AGP 8x (which isn't really needed on a server) then you can turn that into a PCI-X bus to support a single 10 Gig Ethernet controller.

      Of course, there is still the bottleneck of the memory subsystem which can make or break a high-end system.

    13. Re:not obsolete by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2

      Mmmmm... my own private 10Gb/s pipe.

      Let's see, that's about 1GB/s, so I can download the three ISOs for MDK8.2 in oh... 3 seconds or less!

      --
      Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
    14. Re:not obsolete by Detritus · · Score: 2

      Ethernet is not Aloha. See Measured Capacity of an Ethernet: Myths and Reality, Boggs et al.

      --
      Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
    15. Re:not obsolete by Pii · · Score: 2
      I think you, and a number of others that are pursuing this "disk access" angle, are missing the purpose of 10GigE.

      While I have no doubt that you'll see a 10GigE interface card soon, and that large hosts (Big Iron, Big Unix) may be able to take advantage, it's really not about Host-to-Switch connectivity.

      It's about Switch-to-Switch connectivty.

      I deploy a lot of networks where you have a tremendous number of ports at the access closet, and you typically end up with 1 to 2 Gbps to the closet (2 Gbps when channelling).

      As an example, a Cisco Cat 4006 chassis, fully loaded, can support up to 240 users. That many users can certainly chew up a 1 Gbps uplink to the core.

      Additionally, what about when you need to cascade multiple switches in a closet, or expand your core? Sure, maybe I get 64 Gbps across the backplane of a given switch, but what about between the two switches? I'm limited to 4 Gbps between them in a channel configuration, and in so doing, I have chewed up 8 (!) Gigabit ports.

      Now, for those same 8 ports, I get 40 Gbps between the switches. Odds are, I can get away with only 1 or 2 connections, using just 4 ports.

      --
      For those that would die defending it, Freedom
      has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
    16. Re:not obsolete by monkeydo · · Score: 2

      Interesting fact: i have seen "ethernet switches" sold which have collision lights. It makes me wonder how dumb the network cards are by that comapany that they can't get their own carrier detection right. :) Either that or they are selling to the masses something which doesn't do actual switching, or has such a pitiful buffer that it still needs a collision light.

      You missed the third option, which is that they know more about Ethernet than you do.

      There is nothing wrong with putting a collision light on a switch. Ethernet and Fast Ethernet switch ports can certainly have collisions.

      In older networks switches are frequently used to agregate hubs. Even though the switchport represents a single collision domain, if you plug a hub in there may be many hosts. It is very likely you will see collisons on the switch in this case. It is also likely that you will see collisions on Half-Duplex segments with a single host if it is very busy. In this case however you should see very few.

      In Full-Duplex mode collisions cannot occur, and in fact collision detection is turned off. Do not make the mistake of assuming that because a single device is plugged into a switchport that its operating in Full-Duplex or that you won't see collisions.

      The most common way to misconfigure a switch is to have all the ports set to auto, and the hosts hardcoded full duplex.

      Disclaimer: I am a CCNA, however i saw my classmates for who they were. A trained monkey could pass those classes.

      No comment.

      --
      Si vis pacem, para bellum
      The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
    17. Re:not obsolete by KjetilK · · Score: 2

      Yeah, besides, my serves says:
      root@pooh:~> hdparm -t /dev/hda

      /dev/hda:
      Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 6.75 seconds = 9.48 MB/sec

      Though I admittedly don't really know what this means, something tells me that the bandwidth between my HD and the rest of the computer needs to improve a lot before I need to worry about the bandwidth outside the box... :-)

      --
      Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
    18. Re:not obsolete by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

      We'd actually talked about these at work since our backbone is built all on 6500s. Not that we need the bandwidth right now but it never hurts to stay ahead of the curve espically since we're starting to run gigabit out to buildings. Right now the big problem is port density. The gigabit modules we use now have 16 ports per blade, however the 10 gig modules are only a single port per blade. The chassies would get real full real fast if we tried to do that. However I'm sure it won't be long before higher density modules are available.

    19. Re:not obsolete by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

      "The most common way to misconfigure a switch is to have all the ports set to auto, and the hosts hardcoded full duplex."

      Or try to use a 3com card with auto anywhere. I don't know why but 3com 905s can't seem to autonegoiate to save their lives. When I started at my current job the room we're in is run from a 3548. the ports were all set too auto which worked just fine with all the Intel NICs in everyone's system. It all negoated to 100 full and it was good. However my system had a 905 in it and for whatever reason it kept getting a duplex mismatch with the switch. Both sides had to be set to 100 full.

      Now the really weird thing is I have a 905 at home and a 3com 3300 switch (24 port 10/100). You'd think their network card and their switch could auto negoiate. Nope.

      I don't know what their major malfunction is, Intel cards don't seem to have any trouble at all.

    20. Re:not obsolete by rew · · Score: 2

      On a side note, I have sucessfully pulled 130Mbytes/sec out of 5400 RPM IDE Disks on 3ware controllers, with a cost less than $9000. 3 controllers, 24 disks, 64 bit 33Mhz PCI. RAID 0 over 5. So the potential is there to exceed current GigE, without too many disks or controllers, or getting too expensive.

      What ARE you talking about?

      Get an Asus A7M266-D based computer, two Athlons, and 4 maxtor 160G 5400 RPM drives on the on-board controller and you get 130Mb per second. $2500?

      Roger.

    21. Re:not obsolete by zeno_2 · · Score: 2

      Hmm.. im pretty sure what the above poster was stating is that this 10gigabit network is not for a single machine, you could hook up 10 1gigabit machines to this and use it as a single pipe.

      Anyone using gigabit networks is going to be using a switch, there's really not much of a point in using hubs anymore. The idea that a 10gigabit network is stupid because pci can't keep up, that really doens't matter though, as the above poster stated, its not making one single machine communicate faster, its making a network of machines being able to communicate with each other without running into situations where all the bandwidth is saturated.

  3. What an informative link. by taliver · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's one that might be a little more informative. I leave the google link to someone else.

    --

    I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!

  4. Fine, I'll do it myself. by taliver · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is the google link.

    --

    I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!

  5. In meaningful terms by Throatwarbler+Mangro · · Score: 5, Informative
    10Gigabit/sec = 1.25Gigabytes/sec

    1 LoC (Library of Congress) = 10 Terabytes = 10,000 Gigabytes

    That's 0.000125LoC/sec, or roughly 2.22 hours to transfer the entire contents across 10GigE.

    Wow.

    1. Re:In meaningful terms by stevelinton · · Score: 2

      About 1000 DVD quality video channels, or a feature length movie in a few seconds, or a bit longer for some future HDTV standard.

      Streaming digital holographic porn, anyone?

    2. Re:In meaningful terms by glwtta · · Score: 5, Funny

      I thought the time honoured (and extremely relevant) measure of LoC/s has been officially replaced with HG/s (Human Genomes per second)? Mostly because it allowed for a lot more flexibility in making up figures that don't really tell you much, if I remember correctly.

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    3. Re:In meaningful terms by Dark+Nexus · · Score: 4, Informative

      As a slight correction, when it comes to baud ratings, 10 Gigabit/sec = 1 Gigabyte/sec

      It's 8:1 for storage, but generally 10:1 for network ratings (an example - more for serial ports, but it still applies), thanks to a header and a footer bit sent with every byte. Sometimes (rarely), throw in a parity bit for good measure.

      Mind you, that's still only 2.78 hours.

      --
      Dark Nexus
      "Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
    4. Re:In meaningful terms by psychos · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is incorrect. Low speed serial interfaces do tend to use a start bit and a stop bit, but higher speed interfaces generally do not.

      I'm not very familiar with 10gige technology yet, but my brief research shows that it uses 64B/66B coding (e.g., 2 overhead bits out of every 66). Running at a clock rate of 10.3125GHz, that gives you a full 10Gbps of throughput, or 1.25 GB/sec.

      100baseT uses 5B/4B coding, which does result in 2 overhead bits out of every 10 just like your serial line example. However, 100baseT actually runs at 125MHz so you do get a real 12.5 MB/sec out of it.

      Of course, if you really want to be picky about "LoC/sec" or whatever pointless measure the popular media has latched onto this week, you need to consider the overhead of TCP headers, whether or not you want to allow jumbo frames in your calculations, and so on.

    5. Re:In meaningful terms by monkeydo · · Score: 2

      Since the amount of overhead really varies with the transmition medium it makes a lot more sense to use Byte=8 Bits and then add a fudge factor for overhead. It's easy to say it takes 10 bits to send a byte on a serial link, but in networks you have to take into account things like MTU, different protocol headers, CRCs and congestion limitations.

      --
      Si vis pacem, para bellum
      The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
    6. Re:In meaningful terms by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 2

      Let's see if that number is right... I'm curious. According to this, the LOC is "the largest library in the world, with more than 120 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 18 million books, 2.5 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.5 million maps, and 54 million manuscripts."

      18,000,000 books * 200 pages, scanned, * 100K/page = 343 Terabytes.

      2.5 million recordings * 3 minutes per * 1 meg/minute MP3 = 7.5 Terabytes.

      12 million photographs * 250K per = 2.9 Terabytes.

      4.5 million maps * 20 meg scan = 0.9 terabytes

      54 million manuscripts * 50 pages, scanned * 100K/page = 257 terabytes.

      My conclusion: The LOC is more like 611 Terabytes, if you're talking a complete collection with all detail. And that still leaves 29 million items that they didn't identify (out of the stated 120 million items). But those may not be media materials.

      I'm not sure about this 10 Terabyte number. If you just talking books, that's 610K / book. That seems pretty high for just text, but low even for a low-res scan. I think someone just pulled it out of their butt.

      --
      Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
  6. Its not fair! by GnomeKing · · Score: 5, Funny

    *looks at his 14.4k modem*

    *looks at the article*

    *looks at his modem*

    *cries*

    1. Re:Its not fair! by Jugalator · · Score: 3, Funny

      Upgrade to 56k, you cheap, whining bastard! ;-)

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    2. Re:Its not fair! by Abreu · · Score: 2

      Some ISP's still can only connect at thirty-something kbps... And some "free" ISP's limit you to 28.8

      --
      No sig for the moment.
    3. Re:Its not fair! by Reziac · · Score: 2

      I did. Verizon's shit phone lines downgraded me to 28.8 (26k to be exact) :(

      BTW I have some 2BaseT NICs, available at a good price :)

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    4. Re:Its not fair! by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2

      2BaseT? That's 2Mb/s on Twisted Pair!
      If you're referring to ThinNet, that's 10Base2.
      Thicknet is 10Base5.

      --
      Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
    5. Re:Its not fair! by Reziac · · Score: 2

      The really old slow stuff, yeah, that's what I was referring to. I may have misremembered what to properly call it, and managed to make something up :)

      BTW did anyone else see the gigabit ethernet review in Windows&Net magazine? seems so far it's not really living up to its name.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  7. With this annoucement by SkyLeach · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It should be obvious that to burry copper is completely obsolete. Per yard, fiber should be cheaper to manufacture and bury.

    10Gb speeds should be enough for anybody, so start building the infrastructure now and leave the telcos in the dust.

    Will they do it? No. Why not? Because they think that they should bury the copper/fiber hybrid cable that they have been burying and come back and do it again later.

    Burying cable is the most expensive part of telecomm.... retards.

    --
    My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so :-p
    1. Re:With this annoucement by Hieronymus+Howard · · Score: 3, Funny

      10Gb speeds should be enough for anybody

      Just like 640K is enough for anybody.

      HH
      --

    2. Re:With this annoucement by stevelinton · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, burying pipe is the most expensive part..... I worked briefly for a university computing service a few years ago and they spent an absolute fortune to buy a network of yellow plastic pipe connecting all their buildings. A relatively trivial incidental expenditure was to pull some cable through it. When that sort of cable is obsolete, a further trivial expenditure will replace it, etc....

    3. Re:With this annoucement by PhxBlue · · Score: 2

      10Gb speeds should be enough for anybody, so start building the infrastructure now and leave the telcos in the dust.

      It doesn't matter how much bandwidth you give me, I will always want more. And so will the people who design software to run on higher-bandwidth networks.

      --
      !#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
    4. Re:With this annoucement by captaineo · · Score: 2

      I will have enough bandwidth when I get transfer rates comprable to the those on my motherboard.

      Yes, that's a good observation... You have to watch out for the latency though! Today most software hardly "maxes out" DDR/RDRAM memory because of fetch latencies. Then consider that the pure speed-of-light delay to Korea is on the order of 0.1 seconds...There's no way you're going to be able to run general-purpose software with that kind of latency; heck you would even be able to see the delay on each mouse click!

      (come to think of it, this implies that physical size is a fundamental limiting factor on the speed of computers - it does no good to have an infinitely fast CPU if its parts can't communicate rapidly due to speed-of-light delays...)

    5. Re:With this annoucement by Reziac · · Score: 2

      The price of cable (copper or fibre) by the foot is not the real factor. Most of the real cost lies in labour, equipment, permits, etc.

      Here's a real example from SoCal: by the spool, telephone line itself costs about $5/foot. But the total cost to lay underground lines is about $40/foot. (Compare to stringing now-mostly-prohibited overhead lines at $16/foot.)

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    6. Re:With this annoucement by BreakWindows · · Score: 2

      It should be obvious that to burry copper is completely obsolete.

      Wrong! Copper is already strung around every city and home in America (probably a hefty portion of the world). And, there's a standard for gigabit over copper:

      Deployment Guide
      [PDF]

      It's limited to 100 meters, but for communities, home networks and any switched network, I don't see a point in passing up what is already laid in the building. For future digs, they could go either way, and I'll agree fiber is the way to go. But let's not ditch copper just yet...it seems to have some usefulness left in it.

    7. Re:With this annoucement by DickPhallus · · Score: 2

      The university of waterloo does this, this page explains it all:

      U of Waterloo tunnles

      --

      --
      Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
    8. Re:With this annoucement by b1t+r0t · · Score: 2
      It's limited to 100 meters, but for communities, home networks and any switched network

      Dammit, and I'm about 160 meters from my DSL head end. I guess I won't be getting 1000BT delivered to my house any time soon. Gives me more time to afford that gig module for the Cisco switch in my house, though.

      --

      --
      "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
      "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
    9. Re:With this annoucement by Yunzil · · Score: 2

      Speed of light, runcible. Runcible, speed of light.

      I'll leave you two to get acquainted. :)

    10. Re:With this annoucement by Macka · · Score: 2

      The base note said:

      no more nasty copper

      And you said:

      It should be obvious that to burry copper is completely obsolete.


      Are you guys nuts? Working with copper is so much easier than with fibre. Fibre is fragile (fixed bend radius to avoid cracking) and comes in fixed sizes so it's more awkward to do a neat and tidy job because you have to loose the excess somewhere. Then there's the extra cost of the GBIC's and higher cost of the hardware it connects into. Copper cables on the other hand you can make yourself, customising the size to your exact requirements. It's so much more durable, and you can mix and match the same patch panels with 100Mbit and 10Mbit networks.

      If you think that copper is undesirable, you've obviously not had any experience with sizable projects in this area.

      I'd choose copper Gigabit over Fibre any time.

    11. Re:With this annoucement by stevelinton · · Score: 2

      It was Cambridge (UK). The university is scattered through and around the town, and certainly doesn't have anything as centralized as a steam heating system (or, at that time, any central management worth a damn either). The network installation was further complicated by the fact that, in large parts of the town practically everything is a listed historical site of some kind, so huge and strange efforts had to be made not to damage anything. Rumours also mention problems around the Old Cavendish lab (in the town centre). Rutherford split the atom there in 1908 and parts of it are apparently still radio-active.Finally Cambeidge is basically built on a swamp and about 1m above sea-level, so if you dig a hole it tends to fill with water pretty quickly.

  8. Quite L0000ng by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    And I'm just waiting for the new 10/100/1000/10000 NIC's to appear

    ...

    iSpeed ... do you?
    http://www.ispeed.com

  9. I prefer copper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hi,
    anyway, why use fiber, when you can have copper and squeeze it between doors, windows and everything that closes away the server's hum from a peaceful, quiet home? As far as I know, using fiber would be a *snap* between a door.
    OK, having said this, 802.11 should rule. But too expensive. snif.

    ineiti

  10. Copper vs. Fiber by jandrese · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IIRC the original Gig-E hardware (if not the original spec) was Fiber only as well. Eventually people started coming out with copper hardware to save on costs. In most cases, the only real advantages to fiber are the long cable runs and the immunity to interference in noisy EM environments (like your typical computer room). The downside is the cost.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
    1. Re:Copper vs. Fiber by joib · · Score: 2

      IIRC, some researchers had succeeded in making cables suitable for data transmission from some plastic. dirt cheap, and quite fast too (of course not as good as single mode fiber, but better than copper).

  11. Oh the possibilities! by Yoda2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Lynx will rock!!!

  12. wither Cat6 ? by green+pizza · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My building recently had new copper installed. Previously had Cat5 (great for 100BaseT) but was upgraded to cable meeting the specs for the latest Cat6 draft spec (rather than just Cat5e).

    Is 1000BaseTX the end of the line for copper? Or will there eventually by a 10000BaseT that will run on Cat6?

    1. Re:wither Cat6 ? by Barche · · Score: 3, Informative

      This thing runs at 10 Gbps. Ethernet uses Manchester encoding (+-=1, -+=0), which means you have to double the bps to obtain the bandwidth. So you need (about) 20GHz of bandwidth on the cable. At that frequency, losses in a copper cable are just too high. You'd need to use either wave conduits (big metal pipes, not an option) or optical fiber.

    2. Re:wither Cat6 ? by ivan256 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Gigabit ethernet took all it's electronic specifications from fibre channel. When Gigabit came out, there was already copper available for fibre channel, and there was nothing stopping you from using those GBICs. The recent development was that they figured out how to get the signal over regular CAT5.

      I'm sure that there will be a copper spec for 10 gigabit too, it's probably just not ready yet. Consider that people will be wanting to use this on the backplane of embedded network hardware, and blade servers.

    3. Re:wither Cat6 ? by jefftp · · Score: 2

      Only 10 meg EtherNet uses Manchester Encoding.

      100 meg uses 4B5B/NRZI (non-return to zero, inverted) encoding.

      Gig changes the rules yet again.

      Just like a 9600 bps modem is still running at 1200 baud (baud is a unit of sound), but 4 bits get stuffed into one baud, so to did the encoding methods change to accomodate the speed changes in ethernet.

  13. What you can do with 10Gbps by Jugalator · · Score: 3, Funny

    Time to...

    Download a typical 100K pr0n JPG: 0.00001 s
    Umm...
    Download a 650Mb ISO: 0.52 s
    Hm...
    Download 2 650Mb ISO's: 1.04 s
    Eeh?!
    Download 100 650Mb ISO's: 52 s
    Wow!
    Download 1000 650Mb ISO's: 8.7 min
    Jeez!
    Download an image of CowboyNeal: 12.31 hours
    Bah... Tech still need to catch up.

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    1. Re:What you can do with 10Gbps by NoMoreNicksLeft · · Score: 2

      Download an image of CowboyNeal: 12.31 hours

      Huh? Are you using some kind of submolecular scanning technology? Besides... who would want an exact duplicate of him anyway?

    2. Re:What you can do with 10Gbps by Mr.+Sketch · · Score: 2, Troll

      Download a typical 100K pr0n JPG: 0.00001 s
      Download a 650Mb ISO: 0.52 s
      Download 2 650Mb ISO's: 1.04 s
      Download 100 650Mb ISO's: 52 s
      Download 1000 650Mb ISO's: 8.7 min
      You forgot one:

      Download Windows 2003: 1h 35m 12s

      --
      Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
  14. Oh Man! My Network was finally upgraded 100mbs. by jellomizer · · Score: 2

    This really stinks. It took me 3 years to avocate 100mbs. And now its 2 revs behind.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  15. No more copper-bandits by .sig · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe now those damn geeks will stop tearing the copper pipes out of old buildings to reuse as network cabling. Now its time to toughen security on our fiber!

    --
    -Space for rent
    1. Re:No more copper-bandits by erpbridge · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yup.... make sure to watch out for bandits trying to make off with Metamucil fiber supplements!

  16. Hit me with the clue-stick please! by Andy_R · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Can someone bring me up to speed?

    1) The link shows it has been approved by "Revcom" - who are Revcom, and why should I be interested in their approval?

    2) Seeing as ethernet seems to speed up by an order of magnitude each time, why does the standard not allow for many more x10 jumps?

    3) How far is 10Gb Ethernet from getting to the consumer/business market?

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
    1. Re:Hit me with the clue-stick please! by GigsVT · · Score: 5, Informative

      revcom

      IEEE

      Consider yourself hit with clue-stick.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    2. Re:Hit me with the clue-stick please! by ivan256 · · Score: 2

      3) How far is 10Gb Ethernet from getting to the consumer/business market?

      I know of companies that have had 10 gigabit ethernet chips working internally for over 3 years now. They were just waiting for the standard to come out. Now they'll tweak their chips to meet the standard and release them. You should be seeing these in stores Real Soon Now(TM). Expect them to cost between $1k and $3k per HBA at first though. They probably won't reach an affordable level for 5 years or so. We still haven't completed the transition to gigabit.

  17. As if 1000BaseT didn't suck enough CPU cycles by green+pizza · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm guessing 10GbitE will be used for inter-switch and inter-router connections long before it gets to the desktop. Ever looked at performance comparisions between 100BT and 1000BT between just two PCs? A couple years ago the difference wasn't much... NICs weren't efficent enough and the host PC's didn't have enough CPU power to handle that many tiny packets per second. Jumboframes and faster CPUs have helped a lot since then, but we're still a long ways away from even 90% utilization between two PCs with 1000BT. And here we are with 10GigE, with 10x as many packets per second.

    I'm I the only one that thinks the only efficent 10GigE NICs are going to be PCI-X cards with an onboard 2.6 GHz P4 co-processor and 512 MB of buffer?

    1. Re:As if 1000BaseT didn't suck enough CPU cycles by Enry · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There was an article in the Linux Journal a few months ago (February issue I think) that talked about intelligent network cards. They had an onboard XScale CPU and its own OS and TCP/IP stack.

      What would happen is the OS (Linux) would get intercepted at the socket layer and pass the data to the network card. The card would then handle the process of building the packet and all the remaining layers of communication.

      This allowed for a high amount of main CPU time left over for actually doing processing while the network card CPU was focused on handling the TCP/IP packet work. IIRC, you could saturate a 1Gb line with data at only 5% main CPU usage.

    2. Re:As if 1000BaseT didn't suck enough CPU cycles by bluGill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My company once did this for a 25Mhz dec machine. We discovered that you now need a new protocol to the adaptor card, and the overhead of that protocol is equal to a well tuned tcp/ip stack. So if they can actually make this work, what it really means is that linux hackers should spend some time to tune the stack.

      Note though that tuning the stack may come at the expense of maintainability, or flexability.

    3. Re:As if 1000BaseT didn't suck enough CPU cycles by EvlG · · Score: 2

      That sounds really neat.

      How long until these things are actually in the hands of consumers?

    4. Re:As if 1000BaseT didn't suck enough CPU cycles by JordanH · · Score: 2
      • I'm I the only one that thinks the only efficent 10GigE NICs are going to be PCI-X cards with an onboard 2.6 GHz P4 co-processor and 512 MB of buffer?

      Sure, today. I'm still glad to see that networking standards are being pushed far forward in advance of computing equipment. 10MB/sec Ethernet was hard for computers to keep up with when it first came out, but I'm glad they didn't wait for the computers to catch up before establishing the standard.

      New low-end desktops today can comfortably handle 100mb/sec no problem. High end handles 1Gig/sec. In about 5 years, by Moore's law, the new high end machines point to point will be able to use up all of that 10Gig/sec Ethernet. Ethernet is supposed to support all the machines on a LAN.

      The fact that we can bearly support 10Gig/sec Ethernet now seems pretty irrelevant to me.

    5. Re:As if 1000BaseT didn't suck enough CPU cycles by billh · · Score: 2
      Ethernet is supposed to support all the machines on a LAN.

      That is what switches are for. You don't need to share bandwidth with other computers on the LAN. If you have too much traffic between two computers, and are saturating the link to either of them, then you have a network design issue.

    6. Re:As if 1000BaseT didn't suck enough CPU cycles by ahfoo · · Score: 2

      Trivial point but. . .
      TSMC is currently in production at 130nm, starting 90nm process by the end of this summer and jumping to 65nm process in 2005. IBM says 40nm is the final limit for CMOS transistor gates. If it is indeed the middle of 2002, then I don't think Moore's Law is going to be holding in five years.
      Of course there's always multiple processor configurations, advances in circuit designs and better nanotech (since processor designs already are properly classified as nanotech at the 0.1 micron level) and all sorts of things to push the limits one more time, but Moore's Law and CMOS are more or less at the end of the road once you're dealing with resolutions of a few dozen atoms which is what you've got at 40nm. And that information is according to the people who have the most to gain by denying it --IBM, Intel, TSMC, UMC etc.

    7. Re:As if 1000BaseT didn't suck enough CPU cycles by p3d0 · · Score: 2

      The easiest way to guarantee you'll be wrong is to predict that computer advances will cease at some definite time.

      --
      Patrick Doyle
      I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
    8. Re:As if 1000BaseT didn't suck enough CPU cycles by JordanH · · Score: 2
      • That is what switches are for. You don't need to share bandwidth with other computers on the LAN.

      To prevent your having to share bandwidth with no other computers on a LAN, you'd have to have switches at every point in the LAN. Ultimately, in such a configuration, you still have the potential for contention. Sure, switch all the 10Gig/sec lines so that they essentially talk to each other with no interference locally. What if those same two machines decide to talk to a third machine somewhere else on your network. You're bandwidth limited.

      • If you have too much traffic between two computers, and are saturating the link to either of them, then you have a network design issue.

      Sure, but I was pointing out that it won't be too long before two computers talking to each other could potentially swamp a 10Gig/sec Ethernet.

      Now, I agree that it's highly unlikely that two computers will be swamping a 10Gig/sec Ethernet in a well designed network anytime soon, but the possibility of it leads one to believe that 10Gig/sec just isn't the infinite room for growth that we assume it is today.

  18. Re:Why Bother ? by CausticPuppy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actually, physics won't allow you to use "unlimited bandwidth."

    --
    -CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
  19. How big and busy is your network though? by Chas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seriously. Unless you're pushing quad-digit node-counts or are sharing streaming video all over the place (or just have lots of 0-day servers), 10Gb isn't going to really provide you with any appreciable performance gain over 100Mb.

    In most cases, small files are sucked down well before your bandwidth usage ramps up that far. And even larger files would probably only be sucked down a few seconds faster (mainly because of the speed of the storage medium on your system).

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  20. Re:Can I actually use that? by larien · · Score: 3, Informative

    As others have pointed out, this is irrelevant for "average" PCs. Where it comes in useful is for high-end servers, network backbones and (possibly) clusters which throw a lot of data around.

  21. Re:Beowulf Cluster by DHam · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, for many parallel applications the killer is latency rather than bandwidth. That's why we end up shelling out so many Euros for proprietary networks like Myrinet. I don't know what the latency on 10Gbit is but Gbit ethernet is not really much better than 100Mbit.

  22. great for backbones and so forth but... by st0rmshad0w · · Score: 2

    but why would you need networking to the desktop that's so much faster than the data transfer rates if the internal components?

  23. Slashdot Effect by WolfDeusEx · · Score: 4, Funny

    10Gigabit still woun't standand up to the slashdot effect

    --
    Shoot me
    1. Re:Slashdot Effect by jdavidb · · Score: 2, Funny

      Don't be too proud of this technical monstrosity you've constructed. The ability to transfer the Library of Congress in less than three hours is insignificant compared to the power of the slashdot effect.

      Rats. It would have been funny if you hadn't gotten to it first. :)

      --
      Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
    2. Re:Slashdot Effect by fruey · · Score: 2

      Except that the SlashDot effect is not so much a bandwidth issue, as an inability to serve multiple connections at the same time all at varying speeds. That's what really screws servers, not the available bandwidth.

      --
      Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
  24. Unless... by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 2

    ...you used this stuff

    --

    Technoli
  25. Oops, never mind by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 2

    That'll teach me to read the article :)

    --

    Technoli
  26. Re:Will Cable companies be using this? by NoMoreNicksLeft · · Score: 2

    Yes, my good old DOCSIS to 4/16 cable modem kinda sucks.

    LOL.

    Could someone please explain to the idiot above that unusual/old networking technologies do not necessarily fall into the "tokenring" category? That used to be my duty here on slashdot, but I'm getting really burnt out with it.

    Cable companies almost universally use what is known as DOCSIS. Not token ring. Not even close. Token ring is not FDDI, nor ARCnet. They are all different things, using different cable types in different enviroments. They are not ethernet or 10base2/5.

  27. ah, the pleasures of a government job by caveat · · Score: 2, Funny

    that's the great thing about working at a national lab - in my office i have a gigabit network connection straight to the backbone (the advantages to being tech-savvy in a generally retarded department..."oh come on, the 100/1000 card is like $25 more than the 10/100...and it's not your money anyway"). wonder how long before they upgrade the network, those iso's take *forever* at 700KB/s...
    yes, i know i'm not pushing my connection at all @ 700K, and i know 10-gig ethernet wouldn't make a rat's ass of a difference, but i like to gloat (/. on mozilla 1.0 takes, oh, 0.981 seconds to load and render)

    --

    Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
  28. Wow, the implications by Daath · · Score: 2

    Now it seems feasible to actually share RAM over the ethernet - That would be nice :D

    --
    Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
  29. Re: Enough for anybody by cnladd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    10Gb speeds should be enough for anybody

    Just like 640KB of RAM should be enough for anybody? :)

    --

    --
    Welcome to the land of the easily amused...

  30. Switch prices by stevelinton · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Switches for these speeds are still kind of large, awkward and pricy. We had a visiting lecturer from one of the major players in this level of kit talking here about 6 months ago, and their top-end product (he showed a photo) was a 48-way full bandwidth 10Gb switch, It filled two full height 19" racks, consumed 20kW and cost upwards of $2M.

    Of course they've probably come down a but in the last few months...

  31. Pushing the limits of hardware by Klox · · Score: 2, Interesting

    10Gb Eithernet is pushing the limits of hardware. Everyone working on this are only running the optical link at 10Gb, but then splitting the signal into 4 lanes (called XAUI) so the signal can be processed at sane speeds. Both the 10Gb Ethernet spec. and the 10Gb Fibre Channel spec. take this into account, so all the data is 128-bit alligned.
    Companies won't have hardware in their labs until early next year, so don't expect that you will see and 10Gb NICs at Best Buy any time soon.

  32. Re:Can I actually use that? by amorsen · · Score: 2
    Will an adverage PC be able utilize that speed?


    No. The answer is easy because the only reasonable way to connect high speed to a standard PC is via the standard 33MHz 32-bit PCI bus. That is 1056Mbps theoretically, but you'll be lucky to see 900Mbps in practice. Therefore an average PC can almost utilize the speed of gigabit ether. 10 gigabit is out of the question.



    The solution is to go to PCI-X which is a 64-bit 133MHz bus in version 1. Even then, the theoretical bandwidth of ~8Gbps cannot saturate 10Gbps ether. PCI-X version 2.0 will provide 266MHz and 533MHz speeds, but whether that ever shows up in a standard PC is doubtful.

    --
    Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
  33. 10Gb over copper? Won't happen! by xt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The reason is material properties.

    Six months ago, I had the chance to talk with the 3Com technical manager who was on the board drafting the spec.

    What he said was very simple; all tests indicated that the only way to have 10Gb over copper is to limit the connection distance to centimeters!

    1Gb already pushed the envelope for copper, using all pairs, multiplexing, and error correction; 10Gb is just not possible.

    1. Re:10Gb over copper? Won't happen! by ivan256 · · Score: 2

      the only way to have 10Gb over copper is to limit the connection distance to centimeters!

      Why is that bad? Centimeters is plenty for backplane traffic.

      Also, who said it had to be over CAT5?

    2. Re:10Gb over copper? Won't happen! by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2

      4x InfiniBand (8Gbps) can run over copper, although the cabling is expensive. My guess is that it's only a matter of time before someone adopts this approach for 10GbE (for better or worse).

    3. Re:10Gb over copper? Won't happen! by ivan256 · · Score: 2

      the point of this spec is to retain compatibility with and seem natural to those familiar with Ethernet

      Why? This technology won't be for links to the desktop for a decade. This is pretty much backbone only stuff right now. Ethernet has had it's share of phyiscal links. There is no reason for them not to brake compatability with existing cabling.

    4. Re:10Gb over copper? Won't happen! by ivan256 · · Score: 2

      They call it ethernet because of the frame type, not because of the physical layer. You don't need to do any encapsulation.

  34. Orbital RAM by Rupert · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You thought the latency was bad with RDRAM!

    The speed of light will be a hindrance to your plan.

    --

    --
    E_NOSIG
  35. bus is the limiter now by photon317 · · Score: 2


    Do the math - even on a "high end" server:

    Sun SBus - 25mhz x 64bit = ~800mbps
    PCI 33mhz x 32bit = ~1000mbps
    PCI 66mhz x 64bit = ~4000mbps

    And that of course is the raw speed for the whole bus. It's shared between multiple device - and even then you usually can't get the real theoretical maximum throughput.

    Until busses at least 3x faster than 64/66 pci become common on server hardware, this will only be realistically deployable as network infrastructure (eg Inter-Switch Links between high end Cisco Catalysts). Even at 3x 64/66 pci, one 802.3ae card will saturate the bus.

    Of course 10Gbit Fibre Channel is also coming down the pipe soon - hopefully between the two there will be a real drive for newer bus architectures to actually go mainstream in the server market.

    --
    11*43+456^2
    1. Re:bus is the limiter now by photon317 · · Score: 2


      oops, my quick mental math led me astray - SBus would be ~1600mbps, not ~800mbps. In any case, doesn't change the point :)

      --
      11*43+456^2
  36. Re:Beowulf Cluster by joib · · Score: 2

    Yes, and myrinet (wulfkit/quadrics/via/whatever) makes Gb ethernet seem dirt cheap by comparison...:(

  37. Fiber only - for the moment by Ashurbanipal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Every time they come out with a new standard for ethernet it's the same old schpiel - "you need this special expensive coax/shielded-pair/fiber-optic etherhose to make it work; you canna change the laws o' physics Cap'n!"

    Then eight months later somebody figures out how to run it on old lamp cords and string.

    Don't rush out to buy fiber unless you need the noise isolation (glass is great for that!) and don't care about the cost.

    1. Re:Fiber only - for the moment by stienman · · Score: 2

      Don't rush out to buy fiber unless you need the noise isolation (glass is great for that!)

      When I saw this bit of news I ran to my local fiber cable company, bought a 5km spool, and placed it in front of my monitor.

      Now I don't see any of the noise from trolls on slashdot. Glass is great for noise isolation!

      -Adam

    2. Re:Fiber only - for the moment by b1t+r0t · · Score: 2
      Don't rush out to buy fiber unless you need the noise isolation

      ...or the distance. In any case, don't go thinking you're "future-proofing" yourself by stringing fiber through the walls of your house. Because while there's only one kind of Cat 5e copper, there's at least two kinds of fiber (single mode and multi-mode) to deal with. And some corollary of Murphy's Law will predict that whichever kind of fiber that you've spent money to install without an immediate need will be the wrong kind when the need arrives.

      The only kind of "pipe" which is truly future-proof is an empty one, with air inside. One inch is a nice size. And maybe a length of nylon lanyard to help pull something through.

      --

      --
      "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
      "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
  38. Many are missing the point here by buss_error · · Score: 3, Informative
    Sure, you can't use all 10G on ONE machine. Even a server can't use all that speed. Even using many NICs. (Buss congestion, ya know.) That isn't the point here. The point is that instead of having to segment a lot of traffic off to a vlan or other workaround, that traffic can be supported on one lan. This reduces equipment, interconnections, configuration, and alot of other headaches. In short, you can reduce the total points of failure.

    And remember, Intel isn't the only hardware platform out there. While I don't know of a hardware platform that can make fully support the speeds needed, there are some that can support better than 4000 Kbps now.

    --
    Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
    1. Re:Many are missing the point here by cybercuzco · · Score: 2
      there are some that can support better than 4000 Kbps now.

      I think everyone is supporting better than 4000 kbps now: 4000 Kbps=4Mbps

      --

  39. Arg. by be-fan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now my PC133 RAM is *really* obsolete. It can't even handle an ethernet connection!

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  40. What use is this? I can think of a few... by sacremon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I work in a data center for a major ISP/backbone provider. While we've got OC48's coming in from the backbone, it's 1Gb ethernet to the LAN distribution routers. With 10Gb ethernet, we can finally fully utilize that incoming bandwidth without having to use a lot of ports.

    Another good use is the emerging use of iSCSI, or SCSI over ethernet. 1Gbps ~ 100MBps, but more likely around 60-80Mbps. With 10Gbps, a SAN based on iSCSI will actually be able to use the throughput of those SCSI drive arrays.

    Eventually this will trickle down to the desktop, but not right now. So it doesn't really matter what PCI can handle - this isn't presently meant for it. BTW, 133MHz PCI-X will give 10Gbps, so if you have a dedicated PCI-X bus to that adapter, you can handle it will today's technology.

    --
    If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
  41. Obsolete? by mindstrm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know you say this jokingly.. or do you?

    This is not THE new standard, it is A new standard.

    It is THE standard for 10Gbps ethernet. Nothing more.

    Gigabit is hardly obsolete when a) very few corporate networks are using Gigabit outside the server room, and...

    Your average workstation can probably not even push 10Gbps, or anywhere near it in the first place. (Of course, that's not as big a deal, because it's ethernet, right? A single host can't max it out anyway.. the higher capacity means more hosts with lower latency.)

  42. latency? by _|()|\| · · Score: 2
    Where it comes in useful is for high-end servers, network backbones and (possibly) clusters

    HP's TruCluster is designed to use a proprietary cluster interconnect called Memory Channel, with a bandwidth of about 100 MB/s. Gigabit Ethernet is cheaper, but can't compete when it comes to latency. Any idea how we can expect this new standard to compare?

    1. Re:latency? by larien · · Score: 2
      I'd assume it would be slightly faster due to the increased bandwidth (i.e. it takes less time to transmit x bytes). However, it would depend on your requirements as to whether latency or bandwidth are your priority when you choose a transport.

      The main clusters to benefit would be ones like Beowulf which tend to use "commodity" hardware (not that 10Gbps is commodity... yet!).

    2. Re:latency? by _|()|\| · · Score: 2
      The main clusters to benefit would be ones like Beowulf which tend to use "commodity" hardware

      TruClusters can use Ethernet as the cluster interconnect, but Memory Channel is recommended, because of its lower latency.

      I was also thinking of Oracle 9i RAC. The Oracle / Dell / Red Hat bundle uses Gigabit Ethernet. I'm not familiar with the Oracle cluster file system, but I suspect that it would benefit from a low-latency interconnect.

  43. Can you say Distributed Computing? by cybercuzco · · Score: 2

    If you can connect two computers together across the office and run them as if you had the two processors in one box, this is a big leap for distributed computing. The main problem today with distributed computing is that the network is the bottleneck, so you can only run tasks that can be easily broken into small chunks. You therefore cant use software designed for the big 64 way IBM Big Iron, because all their processors are on the same bus so you dont have to split stuff up, the processors talk to each other realtime. 10G ethernet allows you to string 64 cheap boxes together and run them as if all the processors were on the same bus, so you can run all that nuclear explosion simulation or weather simulation software that youve always wanted to but couldnt find the spare $10M to buy a supercomputer. Id wager that apples Xserve will be one of the first widely available computers to run 10G (you could get 1G from them like 2 years ago) Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.... ;-)

    --

    1. Re:Can you say Distributed Computing? by photon317 · · Score: 2


      It will make it better, but you 10G ethernet doesn't match the speed of an SMP interconnect. If a processor has a 133 Mhz DDR bus (like an AthlonMP), that's ~ 17Gbps. You might assume that by the time 10G ethernet is widely deployed, processors might be utilizing 200 Mhz DDR busses for ~25Gbps. It's also considerably lower latency across those little copper traces on the board compared to going through 10G ethernet.

      Technology will improve for all sorts of networks and busses, but it will almost always be universally true that a tight interconnect inside a single machine will perform better than an externally cabled network between machines.

      --
      11*43+456^2
  44. Re:!not obsolete by mjpaci · · Score: 2

    I don't believe that there are even 1000Base-T hubs. It's all switches.

  45. Bandwidth bottleneck on motherboard - AGP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Okay, now PCI is a bottleneck. Even 64bit PCI, quad-pumped, would still only support around 8Gb/sec... So I suggest that we repurpose the AGP port. We can go back to boring old PCI for the graphics card, so lets implement AGP network cards! Of course, it won't be the "Accelerated Graphics Port" anymore, it will be the... "Always Generous Pornography" "Accelerated Game Piracy" "Automatic Grits-to-Pants"

  46. Anyone knows the MTU? by Oestergaard · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does anyone know how big packets one can send thru such a pipe ?

    100MBit maintained the same MTU as 10MBit, 1GBit maintained the same MTU too - leading to severe problems with performance. It's bad enough on 100Mbit, it's horrible on 1Gbit, to think that they maintained the 1500 byte limit on 10Gbit gives me the shakes...

    Yes, I know about "jumbo frames", and I challenge you to find an affordable 1Gbit switch that actually supports it.

    Anything below 64KByte packets would be insane as I see it.

    Anyone knows ?

  47. Hairy smoking golfballs by alienmole · · Score: 3, Informative
    (come to think of it, this implies that physical size is a fundamental limiting factor on the speed of computers - it does no good to have an infinitely fast CPU if its parts can't communicate rapidly due to speed-of-light delays...)

    Researchers have realized this for decades. Before enormous silicon chip densities became ordinary, engineers at IBM (IIRC) used to say that the future of computers was "hairy smoking golfballs". This captured a number of important characteristics of very fast computers:

    • Hairy because of all the wiring that would be involved (like the rubber strings in the core of old golfballs)
    • Smoking because of all the heat that would be generated
    • Golfball-sized because of latency issues, as you said
    • Golfball-shaped because a sphere is the most efficient use of space for components that need to be interconnected.

    Since those days, Intel and its competitors have fulfilled all of these predictions except for the spherical shape, which is much more difficult and not as important as the other characteristics.

    A Pentium 4 is hairy - those 55 million transistors have a lot of connections; and smoking, as anyone whose CPU fan has broken can attest. It's smaller than a golfball in cross-sectional area. That size isn't just to make them more convenient! If a physically bigger CPU would be faster, you can bet someone would be building them.

  48. Re:tacions for a signal? by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2

    Geosync has a MINIMUM .25s latency. That's just ONE round trip (45000 miles). Things get slower from there.

    Unless, of course, you've invented subspace radio.

    --
    Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
  49. Re:Caveman by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2

    Your Root-ness, I'm just a simple caveman. Your high speed data access frightens me.

    -- Frozen Caveman Sysadmin

    --
    Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
  50. Re:Gee, thems is short bits by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2

    Yep.

    --
    Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
  51. What's so bad about copper? by Rorschach1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can strip copper wire with my teeth, and terminate it with a Leatherman tool. Until I can do that with fiber, my network's sticking to good old-fashioned electrons.

  52. Re:sweet by Detritus · · Score: 2

    10/100BASE-T switches are cheap. 1000BASE-T switches are still expensive.

    --
    Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  53. bandwidth is sometimes overrated by mrm677 · · Score: 2

    It is well known that ethernet has lousy latency. My favorite analogy is if you calculate the bandwidth of filling a freight train full of 80gb hard drives and steam it cross country. Great bandwidth, lousy latency.

    This is why building a cluster using ethernet is not a great idea if the communication to computation ratio is very high. Some clusters I've seen use Myrinet, which offers high bandwidth and low latency at the cost of wire distance (and price).

  54. Re:sweet by ncc74656 · · Score: 2
    hmmm, is $39 not cheap enough?

    You might want to read the original message more carefully...the problem is that Gigabit Ethernet switches are still expen$ive. The $39 switch to which you linked is a Fast Ethernet switch, which is an order of magnitude slower.

    I've seen 5-port Fast Ethernet switches for $25. The cheapest Gigabit Ethernet switch I saw on Pricewatch just now was the D-Link DGS-3204, a 4-port switch for $300.

    --
    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  55. 1Gb obsolete? by Gyorg_Lavode · · Score: 2, Funny

    Man, now I'm really going to have to find what's pulling my network down to 10Mbps or I'll ever be able to face my friends.

    --
    I do security
  56. No Copper for 10G Ether by jefftp · · Score: 2

    The only way 10G Ethernet could support copper would be to use two strands of coax, or twinax. This was batted around by the IEEE committee for a great deal of time, but even with twinax the distances for 10G on copper were short (75 meters) and the cost of twinax is higher than fiber.

    So they dropped copper support completely.

    Don't expect to see 10G to the desktop anytime soon. 1G to the desktop is still a waste of money for 99% of the desktops out there.

    10G Ethernet will see the most benefit for switch/router to switch/router connections in WANs and MANs.

  57. Copper rocks for very short distances by billstewart · · Score: 2
    Those annoying copper-wire people keep taking our "we'll finally make you buy fiber now, this time for sure!" standards and implementing them on copper for much less money :-) I can get a GigE-on-copper NIC card at Fry's for $59 bucks, though the cheapest switch I saw that supported it was about $300. It's almost tempting to do gigabit copper at home just because I can :-)

    Obviously if you're actually going anywhere, you want fiber, and the ability to go 10-20km over fiber (for GigE and also for storage-network technologies like FibreChannel) is starting to change the economics and scaling decisions about where you put servers and storage, how much clustering you do, how you handle disaster recovery, etc., but for inside wiring, copper is still convenient.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  58. Re:Learn the SI by photon317 · · Score: 2


    Learn to be practical.

    When was the last time you hear anyone use the term "milihertz"? 1 millihertz would be roughly around 1 cycle every 17 minutes. We're discussing computer networks and system busses. Get with the program, and stop being an anal nitpicker.

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    11*43+456^2
  59. Avoiding network upgrades by overkill by billstewart · · Score: 2

    A decade or so ago we did a consulting gig out at a different national lab, which then had a classified-projects design network and a regular network, and they'd decided they wanted to do the fastest hairiest network they could for the classified net, because the security decisions involved in changing or upgrading things were so painful and difficult. They decided that a gigabite/second per user was about enough - because that's enough for two 32-bit-color 30fps 1024x1024 displays, so the bottleneck is no longer the user's computer, it's the user's eyeballs. In reality, they could use a bit more today, because we're close to 2Kx2K displays, but back then that was about as greedy as they could get, and there wasn't really anything that quite did that:-)

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  60. Re: 2400bps over copper? Won't happen! by mks113 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I recall in university that we were told that a phone line was limited by physics to 1200 baud. They had a couple horrendously expensive Hayes 1200 baud modems in the lab to play with.

    My 1.5 Mb/s DSL line runs over those identical copper lines.

    Yes, physics limits what we can do over copper, but perhaps our understanding of those limits isn't quite as finely tuned as it will be in a few years.

    That said, I have no problem with fibre for new installations, but even that will be upgraded over the years. This is cutting edge. It will become commonplace before too long.

  61. bending copper by spacey · · Score: 2

    Aren't you aware that copper also has limits on the radius you can bend it, based on the thickness of the bundle? You can damage copper by bending it, too.

    -Peter

    --
    == Just my opinion(s)
    1. Re:bending copper by Macka · · Score: 2


      But for Gigabit copper you use Cat5 cables, and you'd have to be deliberatly aggressive over a period of time to damage one through bending.

    2. Re:bending copper by SkyLeach · · Score: 2

      HAHAHAHAHAhahahaheheheheeeee... *whew*

      Don't see many telcos burying cat 5 no matter what they are laying... know why? Because they need at least 100x that much bandwidth on the pipe itself. You are thinking of hte cat five to *each pc*. Sure, if that could carry all the internet bandwidth then it would be fine, but it's not.

      It's way to expensive to put a switch and booster in every 100m, so they have to bury fiber.

      'nuf said.

      --
      My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so :-p
  62. Re: End of Moore's Law by ahfoo · · Score: 2

    Okay you skeptics. I hope you're right. I live in Taiwan and the economy will be totally trashed if I'm right and everything will be okay if you guys are right. So, let's hope I'm just being misled by IBM, EETimes and all these gossip rags sporting this "we're already doing nanotech and it's getting old fast" nonsense. However, let us not forget the boy who cried wolf. Just because people have called it wrong in the past doesn't mean it disappears. I didn't see anybody disputing that CPUs are already at nanoscale.