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.

Comments

I'm going to guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

That off the shelf hardware won't be able to saturate a 100Gb connection.

Re:I'm going to guess...

[Ajehals]

Chicken and egg -

Once the connectivity is there, hardware will become available and gradually more accessible as it is taken up, same goes the other way - if someone suddenly comes up with a bus and card capable of even higher speeds, it will slowly become available and more accessible until connectivity catches up and everyone wants it. Its all about getting to the point were a (potential) mass market appears and it makes the R&D viable. In the short term you will obviously see niche markets for it anyway - and they will pay buckets of cash for this kind of tech because they see a benefit from it.

Re:I'm going to guess...

[forkazoo]

That off the shelf hardware won't be able to saturate a 100Gb connection.

Depends on which shelf.

Seriously, a lot of folks commenting on this news item seem to be convinved that all networks have only one node. Sorry, but I'm on a university, and I think that our interbuilding connections could really saturate a 10 Gb connection in the near future. It may be a long time before one PC can make use of a 100 Gb connection, but it won't be long at all before 1000 PC's can. Deployments will start the same way that 100 Mb and 1 Gb started. Backbone switches will move to the fastest speed, feeding workstations moving at slower speeds. Some specialised equipment will be available for systems which really need to actually move that kind of data to a particular node.

What's in it for desktop users?

[morgan_greywolf]

As it is, your average desktop will not handle anything even close to 100G Ethernet. At that point, your bottleneck is the PCI or PCI-X bus. As the bus has been one of the slowest PC components to innovate, I see these new, ultra-high speed Ethernet standards as only benefiting backbone providers, etc., for many years to come.

Re:What's in it for desktop users?

[corsec67]

What, you think that any ISP would actually allow downloads fast enough to use over 100baseT?

Really, even full 10baseT (as an obtainable download speed, not just the home->CO link speed) would be an improvement to many people.

Re:What's in it for desktop users?

[FireFury03]

What, you think that any ISP would actually allow downloads fast enough to use over 100baseT?

Believe it or not, some people use LANs for things other than accessing the internet... The internet connection speed becomes unimportant if the network is actually a SAN.

Really, even full 10baseT (as an obtainable download speed, not just the home->CO link speed) would be an improvement to many people.

We're reaching the point now where I've stopped caring so much about download speed (I have an 8Mbps DSL) - upload speed is becoming a serious headache since on most ADSL lines (at least in the UK) it tops out at ~340Kbps. At that upload speed you're talking about ~45ms per MTU sized (1500 byte) packet - that's quite a lot of latency jitter and can cause serious problems for realtime applications such as VoIP, which often have jitter buffers of only around 100ms long.

Re:What's in it for desktop users?

[NeuralSpike]

Dude, I think with the various packet headers etc., 100Gbit isn't all that much faster than a 16x PCI express slot. And then there is latency...

I prefer Bill Watkins' take on it.

[Tackhead]

"The need for 100G Ethernet is growing as IP video and transaction-intensive Web 2.0 applications are exploding across the Internet. Companies such as YouTube regularly add 10Gbps service pipes to meet growing demand, and carriers will need a better way to aggregate such links, industry watchers say."

- From TFA.

Which is all well and good, but for honesty, I prefer Bill Watkins' take on it.

"Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn."

Bill watkins, CEO of Seagate

don't trust such initiatives

[SilentGhost]

328 feet - it's a good standard, but I like 100 metres better.

Re:Uplink

[Amouth]

just wanted to note.. while yes Cisco is overpriced they most certainly are not crap.. they do exactly what they are supposed to do and they do it well. if you are looking for something that is above the average Joe's network you are going to have to pay whether it be Cisco, foundry, or anyone else - most people that have Cisco switches don't use half the features that they get with them.. they just plug them in and run.. it is their configurability that makes them rock.

*sigh*

[M0b1u5]

Strange. The standard is to be "six miles" over single mode, and "328 feet" over multimode.

I don't get it!

I mean, we KNOW all decent standards use metric measurements - and Americans are inclined to convert them to the National Stupid System, so 328 feet makes sense (100 metres) - but where does this "6 miles" business come from? It is only 9,660 metres (9.66 km).

Surely the standard will be 10,000 metres - ten kilometres, and the poster was lazy, and couldn't be bothered with the extra 0.2 of a mile?

My question is this: when the specification is clearly based on very simple numbers: 100 metres and 10,000 metres - why convert that into the Stupid System? /.ers are not so stupid as to have to be fed figures fudged for obscurity!