10Gb Ethernet Alliance is Formed

Lucas123 writes "Nine storage and networking vendors have created a consortium to promote the use of 10GbE. The group views it as the future of a combined LAN/SAN infrastructure. They highlight the spec's ability to pool and virtualize server I/O, storage and network resources and to manage them together to reduce complexity. By combining block and file storage on one network, they say, you can cut costs by 50% and simplify IT administration. 'Compared to 4Gbit/sec Fibre Channel, a 10Gbit/sec Ethernet-based storage infrastructure can cut storage network costs by 30% to 75% and increases bandwidth by 2.5 times.'"

Comments

Math on /.

[Idiomatick]

i'm worried they had to say 4 * 2.5 = 10 on /.

Re:Math on /.

[rdebath]

Modern ethernet 100Base-T switched or 1000Base-T can work to 100%. With the switched medium all the links run full duplex and packets for busy links are stored in memory like a router. With a good switch packets for non-busy links get 'wormholed' to the output before they arrive (arrive completely that is).

Normally this means that modern lans won't lose any packets; if your lan is losing packets you have a hardware problem. Perhaps you have an unswitched hub somewhere or a seriously overloaded switch that's running out of memory. But even a low spec switch that can't keep up with the net speed shouldn't lose anything, it should just block the senders till it can deal with the data.

In fact 10Base-2 (cheapernet) was the last ethernet standard that that you couldn't avoid congestion collapse.

Re:Math on /.

[petermgreen]

BTW 10 gigabit ethernet has completely dropped support for half duplex links.

Fibre only?

[masonc]

From their white paper,
"The draft standard for 10 Gigabit Ethernet is significantly different in some respects from earlier Ethernet standards, primarily
in that it will only function over optical fiber, and only operate in full-duplex mode"

There are vendors, such as Tyco Electronic's AMP NetConnect line, that have 10G over copper. Has this been discarded in the standard revision?

Re:Fibre only?

[sjhwilkes]

Not to mention 10 gig CX4 - which uses the same copper cables as Infiniband, and works for up to 15M - enough for many situations. I've used it extensively for server to top of rack switch, then fiber from the top of rack switch to a central pair of switches. 15M is enough for interlinking racks too provided the environment's not huge.

Re:Fibre only?

[mrmagos]

Don't worry, according to the task force for 10GBASE-T (IEEE 802.3an), cat6 can support 10Gbit up to 55m. The proposed cat6a will support it out to the usual 300m.

Re:Fibre only?

[Belial6]

Unfortunately, you made a fundamental, but common mistake. You cannot future proof your home by running any kind of cable. You should have run conduit. That is the only way to future proof a home for data. When I renovated my last home, I ran conduit to every room. It was pretty cool in that I didn't run any data cables at all until the house was finished. When The house was done, I just pulled the phone, coax and Ethernet lines to the rooms I wanted. If and when fiber, or a higher quality copper is needed, it i will just be a matter of taping the new cable to the end of the old, and pulling it through.

Re:Fibre only?

[Pinback]

In your case, you really do get to the internet via tubes.

bandwidth = performance ?

[magarity]

So how will tcpip networking over this speed measure up to dedicated storage devices like SAN over fibre channel? I have to suspect not; existing iSCSI over 1GB tcpip is a lot less than 1/4 of 4GB fibre to a decent SAN. Sigh, I'm afraid even more of my databases will get hooked up to cheap iSCSI over this instead of SANs space that costs more dollars per capacity but delivers the speed when needed :( Reports coming up fast enough? Remember the planning phase when the iSCSI sales rep promised better performance per $ than SAN? It wasn't better overall performance, just better per $. There's a BIG difference.

Re:Block storage?

[spun]

SAN is block storage, NAS is file storage. Simply put, if you send packets requesting blocks of data, like you would send over your local bus to your local hard drive, it is block storage. If you send packets requesting whole files, it is file storage.

Channel bonding

[h.ross.perot]

Sigh, Aggregating 2 or more 1 GIG adapters does not give you 2 GIG of throughput. It is a sliding scale; the more you add the less total bandwidth you see. The safest bonding scheme uses LACP; Link Aggregation Control Protocol. This protocol communicates member state and load balancing request to the link member. 10G over copper will be a good thing for VM's. Sad; that the current crop of 10G over copper adapters do not approach 5 gig throughput; raw. Give the industry time; this it just like the introduction of 1 GIG from fast Ethernet. It took 2 generations of ASICs to get to what we consider a GIG card today.

Will there ever be "enough" bandwidth to a home?

[Dr. Spork]

Stories like this always make me think of the following:

I can't think of anyone who's longing to get a fatter gas pipe connected to their house, or a fatter pipe to municipal water, or a cable of higher capacity to bring in more electricity.

But we're not like that with bandwidth. We always seem to want a fatter pipe of bandwidth! Will it forever be like that? Is the household bandwidth consumption ever going to plateau, like electric, gas and water consumption has in the US? (I know that global demand for these utilities is growing, but that's mainly because there are more people and a larger proportion are being hooked up to municipal utilities. The per-household numbers are not really changing very much, and in some cases decreasing.)

Will there be a plateau in bandwidth demand? If so, when and at what level? Thoughts?