Ethernet at 10 Gbps

An anonymous reader writes "This article talks about 10 Gigabit Ethernet and asks, 'But just how much data can a person consume?' Currently at work, we're working on a major project to re-architect our core application platform so that the different systems can be de-coupled and hosted separately. The legacy design implicitly relies on systems being in the same LAN due to bandwidth-expensive operations (e.g., database replication). Having this much bandwidth would change the way we design. What would you do with this much bandwidth?"

Comments

What would I do?

[Anonvmous Coward]

The company I used to work for was sending very high resolution images from multiple cameras uncompressed from one unit to another to perform analytical operations on them. I think they manged to work at a gigabit, but 10 would be much nicer for them.

What would Joe Sixpack do with it? I'm not sure at the moment. Thing is, since we're working within our limitations today it's hard to concieve of whta use it'd be. However, what happens when it becomes commonplace? It does open doors. Imagine if cable companies traded in coax for ethernet. They could easily send uncompressed HDTV. That'd be pretty slick.

Lots

[BrookHarty]

We use lots of shared drives, remote desktop applications, X traffic, moving core files, database dumps, email with very large attachments (exchange to boot).

We migrated to 100meg, it was like night and day, and we still need more. We finally got 1gig to IT's network, and still to slow to push files with lots of users.

We have a burstable OC192 to our 2nd remote datacenter, OC48/12's to the smaller datacenters. But this is for production networks that need bandwidth, not desktop usage.

Also, my buddy in Japan just told me he got 100Meg DSL, the stuff you can do when bandwidth isn't a concern. Already Internet TV stations popping up there, amazing. Can't wait for this to catch on in the US. I just upgraded to 6M DSL from speakeasy, and its too fast for fileplanet.

Speed kills :)

oooh

[iamdrscience]

IDE over IP. Yes, it does exist.

Re:That's exactly the quote I remembered

[TheToon]

I haven't said that, but a columnist in Byte Magazine in the mid-80s had a rant about this.

He programmed on a Mac, and the compilation took typically 5 to 10 minutes. Enough to get a cup of coffee, check the newspaper and have a quick chat with a cow-orker. Then he got a new Mac, and it compiled the program in a minute or so. No time for coffee, no time for news, no time for smalltalk.

So the new, faster computer was too fast... he had to wait at his desk more with the new computer.

10 Gb/s thats it.

[jellomizer]

Remember this is 10 Gigabits per second that is only 1.25 Gigabytes per second (Assuming 100% speed which I never seen happen). Although Right now that is faster then most computers can handle data internally but there are its uses.

1. System to System Backups. If you have seen the prices of memory and Hard drives space $/GB dropping at a fast rate while magnetic tape remains near constant. Soon the price/GB of memory and Hard drives will be lower then tape so it would be cheaper to backup your data on other Systems and Removable hard drive. So if you have a 3 terrabytes of data it can still take up to 40 minutes.
2. Imagine a Beowolf Cluster connected at 10Gbs still right now the main slow point with a Beowolf cluster is the network bandwidth. at 10Gbs you are getting closer to the speeds of a supercomputer bus.
3. Uncompress Video and Sound. No more lossy compression needed with a bunch of people fighting over compression standards. And we always get high quality Audio and Video realtime off the network
4. 3D Now with 3D displays starting to become available there now will be more data needed to send 3D information. Over the network.

And thats just the tip of the iceberg. Back when the 300bps modem came out they figured the speed was as fast as anyone needed because it was near impossible for anyone to type more then 30 characters per second. Then the 1200 and 2400 bps modem cam out and they though those were as fast as anyone needed because almost no one can read at that rate. Then the 9200 and 14.4k because it takes almost no time to go to the next page 80x25 of colored text. then the 33.6k and 56k modems (Still the fastest modems for 1 normal telephone line) you can now download a 300x200x256 colors picture in no time. As bandwidth increases we find new ways to max it out and also with increased bandwidth we come with new methods of using the computer because it can now do it.