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Corporate Data Centers As Ethernet's Next Frontier

Posted by timothy on from the build-me-a-beowulf-cluster dept.

alphadogg writes with a story that's about the possibilities for the next generation(s) of Ethernet, stuff far beyond 10base-T: "Ethernet has conquered much of the network world and is now headed deep into the data center to handle everything from storage to LAN to high-performance computing applications. Cisco, IBM and other big names are behind standards efforts, and while there is some dispute over exactly what to call this technology, vendors seem to be moving ahead with it, and it's already showing up in pre-standard products. 'I don't see any show-stoppers here — it's just time,' says one network equipment-maker rep. 'This is just another evolutionary step. Ethernet worked great for mundane or typical applications — now we're getting to time-sensitive applications and we need to have a little bit more congestion control in there.'"

2 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Re:what am I missing with this article? by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Informative

    No.
    Ethernet uses collision detection and resending to to manage packets.
    Well it used to anyway. I am not sure about Giga-E
    The way Ethernet used to work is that a sender would listen to see if the line was clear and then send a packet and listen at the same time. If the packet was damaged by a collision the sender would wait a random amount of time and then try to resend.
    This system really bugged a lot of people but it was cheap and it worked.
    This is the actually physical layer and not TCP/IP.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  2. Think of "Ethernet" as "Soup" by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ethernet is more of a generic name than a specific thing. It's more like "soup" than it is like "VHS".

    Ethernet started as a daisy-chained garden-hose-size coax cable with vampire taps. Then RG-58 with BNC connectors, then twisted pairs to a hub, then switching hubs, then wireless... Not much stayed the same, not speed, media, topology,... except maybe carrier-sense. It's basically a comforting name, with the Ethernet-of-the-day varying at the chef's whim.

    Keeping the name while tossing out the last remaining bit of commonality is a bit bizarre.