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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.
Well a faster Pipe for the ISP allow them to increase max speed for their users. So say they had a 100GB Eathernet for their backbone internet connection. That means they could possible increase the max speed for their customers to closer to 10MB as of right now most U.S. ISP tend to cap to 5MBS Anything above that could be to much demmand on their systems. So you as a desktop can see an impovement.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Pause for a moment and realize that 6 miles is approximately 10km, which is probably the "real" spec. Not only is it metric, but it's a power of 10, which gives me lots of warm fuzzies.
The actual standard will state the maximum distance in meters, not in feet. Whoever wrote the article did the conversion from meters to feet.
Just search IEEE 802.3 for yourself. You'll find no mention of "feet". Everything in there is measured in meters.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
You are right. Here are some numbers for the curious, nothing comes close to 100 Gbit/s:
PCIe x16 (2.5 Gbit/s per lane, 8B/10B encoding): 32.0 Gbit/s bidirectional (64.0 Gbit/s of aggregated bandwidth)
PCIe x8 (2.5 Gbit/s per lane, 8B/10B encoding): 16.0 Gbit/s bidirectional (32.0 Gbit/s of aggregated bandwidth)
PCIe x4 (2.5 Gbit/s per lane, 8B/10B encoding): 8.0 Gbit/s bidirectional (16.0 Gbit/s of aggregated bandwidth)
PCIe x1 (2.5 Gbit/s per lane, 8B/10B encoding): 2.0 Gbit/s bidirectional (4.0 Gbit/s of aggregated bandwidth)
PCI-X 2.0, 533 MHz, 64-bit: 34.13 Gbit/s
PCI-X 2.0, 266 MHz, 64-bit: 17.07 Gbit/s
PCI-X, 133 MHz, 64-bit: 8.53 Gbit/s
PCI, 66 MHz, 64-bit: 4.27 Gbit/s
PCI, 66 MHz, 32-bit: 2.13 Gbit/s
PCI, 33 MHz, 32-bit: 1.06 Gbit/s
However, regarding 10G ethernet adapters, does anyone know when vendors will start making use of PCIe x8 or x16 for them ? In all those Internet2 benchmarks papers, everybody complains about PCI-X beeing too slow, but PCIe x8 or x16 would be perfect for 10G.
At 100Gbps, your processor's L1 cache is a bottleneck.
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