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IEEE Releases 802.3ba Standard

Posted by timothy on from the time-has-come dept.

An anonymous reader writes "EEE announced the ratification of IEEE 802.3ba, a new standard governing 40Gbps and 100Gbps Ethernet operations. An amendment to the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard, IEEE 802.3ba, the first standard ever to simultaneously specify two new Ethernet speeds, paves the way for the next generation of high-rate server connectivity and core switching. The new standard will act as the catalyst needed for unlocking innovation across the greater Ethernet ecosystem. IEEE 802.3ba is expected to trigger further expansion of the 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit Ethernet family of technologies by driving new development efforts, as well as providing new aggregation speeds that will enable 10Gbps Ethernet network deployments."

108 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Stuck by Scutter · · Score: 1

    You'll still be stuck on 3Mb/512kb DSL.

    --

    "Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
    1. Re:Stuck by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You know networking exists outside of the internet, right?

    2. Re:Stuck by masshuu · · Score: 1

      I think this is geared for big companies LANS and Campus LANS and Datacenters as an alternative to short runs of fiber

      --
      O.o
    3. Re:Stuck by sortius_nod · · Score: 1

      Tell that to my router... 20Mbps/1.3Mbps

    4. Re:Stuck by ePhil_One · · Score: 2, Informative

      Tell that to my router... 20Mbps/1.3Mbps

      Verizon FIOS here, my basic bundled rate is 25 Mbps/ 25Mbps. I could opt for faster

      --
      You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
    5. Re:Stuck by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 1

      I have 10 Mbps downstream, but still the same 512kbps upstream...

  2. This Has A Use Already by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 1

    I know who can use this type of network speed: the guys trying to make a quadrillion-flop computer. What good is all that CPU horsepower if it can't be used to serve up, um, web pages?

  3. Much welcomed tech by mnmn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's interesting how this will increase the adoption of iSCSI storage, yet the original reason to go to iSCSI will be lost since fiber cables will have to be laid.

    Either way 1Gbit Ethernet is beginning to feel a bit like a bottleneck with storage and other bottlenecks being removed.

    It'll take some time between ratification and cheap D-Link switches...

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
    1. Re:Much welcomed tech by afidel · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nah, thanks to DCE most storage will stay FC using FCoE. What this will do is eventually allow us to get to ridiculous port counts in top of rack and end of row switches and upload all that capacity without requiring a 6" diameter bundle of trunking cables. It will also allow 100Gb to be usable at metro distances since it only requires 4 pairs instead of 10.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    2. Re:Much welcomed tech by donkeyoverlord · · Score: 2, Informative

      The original goal of iSCSI wasn't to avoid using Fiber, it was to avoid using Fiber Channel and requiring the creation of a second network, dedicated to storage, that is managed separately from the standard data network.

    3. Re:Much welcomed tech by whit3 · · Score: 1, Interesting

      It's interesting how this will increase the adoption of iSCSI storage, yet the original reason to go to iSCSI will be lost since fiber cables will have to be laid.

      That seems a tad disingenuous. The real reason for iSCSI was a
      Microsoft price structure that made a network file service very
      expensive unless it went in through the 'disk-on-SCSI-bus'
      back door.

      Linux and iSCSI was a way around the high cost of
      a MS server/client system. None of the Linux-only or Macintosh
      network systems were so encumbered, and worked
      quite well without any iSCSI.

    4. Re:Much welcomed tech by swb · · Score: 1

      I think 10 gig ethernet has been an option for a while now. I'm almost positive one of the sales droids spouted something about Equalogic shipping 10 gig iSCSI SANs.

      AFAIK, most small-midsize organizations engaged in iSCSI SAN also do virtualization and thus don't have a ton of hosts to connect so the fiber part is less of a pain than it might seem given they can still get the "IP" part of iSCSI and leverage cheap and still useful 1 gig connectivity elsewhere.

      Plus 10 gig can do copper. But there won't be any equipment reasonable priced for a year and I doubt most disk implementations would show a huge difference between 10 and 40 or 100 gig.

    5. Re:Much welcomed tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      the original reason to go to iSCSI will be lost since fiber cables will have to be laid...

      I'd guess your not aware that Fibre Channel runs on copper as well. This is cheaper and, therefore, common when distances are short. Here is Apple selling some.

      The appeal of iSCSI, such as it has, is that it leverages relatively inexpensive and thoroughly ubiquitous Ethernet and IP infrastructure (switches and routers.) However, don't conflate Ethernet/IP with copper; there is a lot of optical in non-edge Ethernet.

      iSCSI was never about optical verses copper.

    6. Re:Much welcomed tech by afidel · · Score: 2, Informative

      There's exactly one 4Gb copper FC card and zero 8Gb, the only use I've seen for copper FC is for connecting the bays back to the controllers, from there out it's always fiber optics.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    7. Re:Much welcomed tech by bertok · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's interesting how this will increase the adoption of iSCSI storage, yet the original reason to go to iSCSI will be lost since fiber cables will have to be laid.

      That seems a tad disingenuous. The real reason for iSCSI was a
      Microsoft price structure that made a network file service very
      expensive unless it went in through the 'disk-on-SCSI-bus'
      back door.

      Linux and iSCSI was a way around the high cost of
      a MS server/client system. None of the Linux-only or Macintosh
      network systems were so encumbered, and worked
      quite well without any iSCSI.

      WTF are you talking about? Why was this modded up? Is it just because he's saying something negative about Microsoft?

      I've worked in Microsoft Windows server environments for a decade, and I've never heard of SCSI specific MS licensing, or any kind of special licensing at all for file servers.

      While it's true that a Linux server in general is cheaper from a licensing standpoint (hard to compete with free), that has nothing to do with iSCSI, SCSI, or FC.

      The reason iSCSI is popular is because it's simpler to set up, halves the number of ports and switches required for a fully redundant server environment (minimum 2 ports and 2 switches vs 4 and 4), it has real authentication instead of the worthless "zones" crap in the FC world, provides user friendly names instead of numeric IDs, has encryption, 10Gb Ethernet can outperform even 8Gb FC, and even old 1GbE switches can perform adequately if port trunking is used properly.

      What this all boils down to is that iSCSI is both better and cheaper than FC. Once popular SAN arrays from big vendors start to appear with 10GbE iSCSI as standard instead of an expensive "option", then FC will start to die a rapid and well deserved death.

    8. Re:Much welcomed tech by mnmn · · Score: 2, Informative

      I do not believe you've actually used iSCSI, at all.

      The performance numbers are very different and so are the technologies, Microsoft filesharing is file-level and iSCSI is block level. It means with an iSCSI card, the machine can treat volumes as local disks and install any OS.

      Secondly, you're confusing iSCSI with NFS. NFS has been freely available even back on Windows NT4. However it was not created to counter Microsoft, it was ALREADY there.

      iSCSI until recently has been the only technology that provides block-level storage access and as efficiently as possible on a routable ethernet network. The recent FCoE is even more efficient but its not so easily routable.

      --
      "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
    9. Re:Much welcomed tech by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      It's interesting how this will increase the adoption of iSCSI storage, yet the original reason to go to iSCSI will be lost since fiber cables will have to be laid.

      The spec includes 40Gbit and 100Gbit over copper via twinaxial cables, so you do have to make new runs of cable but you don't have to take the fiber hit when you do. Cat 6 definitely won't cover it though, I'm afraid.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    10. Re:Much welcomed tech by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      Hey man, don't ruin this amature linux admin's fantasy with real world experience, that's just cruel!

      MS licensing is obscene, that's for sure, but they've never tied anything to the hard disk. It's all installs, users, and CPUs, with variations for each category.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    11. Re:Much welcomed tech by Wyvern2005 · · Score: 1

      Dude, if you've been in tech for a decade you showed up a bit late for the original "scuzzy" party.....and get off of my lawn!

      --
      Oops..was I supposed to push that button?
    12. Re:Much welcomed tech by jon3k · · Score: 1

      FWIW, you can do 10Gb on copper.

    13. Re:Much welcomed tech by Anpheus · · Score: 1

      Block level makes it possible for the server to not have to know anything about the data, so the client can host encrypted data on the SAN, or boot from the SAN, or both. Or use a filesystem the SAN has no idea how to inspect, etc.

      Also, it's not extreme latency. It's a few tens of microsecond latency in a small network with OK switches and 1GbE, which iSCSI targets as a market. Tens of microseconds in still two orders of magnitude less than the latency of a disk seek, so for spinning disks, you're not going to notice a difference. For good SSDs, they'll have twice the response time, but still the same overall throughput (unless you're doing a lot of synchronous IO that has to wait for those responses.)

      Better switches and higher throughput connections with iSCSI offloading will get you closer to the single digit microsecond and nanosecond territory, at which point you're more likely to notice that you've saturated the bandwidth to your SAN than notice latency.

    14. Re:Much welcomed tech by mnmn · · Score: 1

      Can you install Windows/Solaris/Linux/AIX on file-level storage, install Oracle/DB2/Exchange/Domino?

      Block-level storage can and does completely replace local harddrives. Thats the reason for bladeservers, where blades have everything but harddisks. They're given volumes of fiber channel, iscsi or fcoe to become their local virtual disks. NFS or CIFS would be completely useless to them without first having block level volumes (except for the rare case of Linux/FreeBSD installed on NFS).

      --
      "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
  4. More ads faster! by joelsanda · · Score: 1

    What I remember most fondly about CompuServe on my 300 baud modem and Commodore 64 was the lack of ads ...

    --
    The Luddites were ahead of their time.
    1. Re:More ads faster! by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yes, but the porn was low-res and slow to download. So it's a double-edged sword.

      --
      There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    2. Re:More ads faster! by poetmatt · · Score: 1

      and yet in probably 5-10 years even 100 gb/s will probably not be fast enough.

    3. Re:More ads faster! by geekoid · · Score: 3, Informative

      I would rather have the adds and my 15Mb line, then my old 1200 baud connection to compuserve.
      We only use 300 baud for internal stuff.

      In 10 minutes I can down load some porn, whack off, and be a sleep in 10 minutes. In those days it was hours just to get a 5 second clip.

      what..TMI?

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    4. Re:More ads faster! by value_added · · Score: 2, Funny

      In 10 minutes I can down load some porn, whack off, and be a sleep in 10 minutes. In those days it was hours just to get a 5 second clip.

      Hmm. I could write that the above is an example of how user contributions on a site like Slashdot can offer recommendations to the average reader that are both informative and practical. On the other hand, I could write something to the effect that what you wrote provides more information than most of us asked for, or want.

      I suspect both of those are too subtle, so I'll tailor my response to the wider Slashdot demographic:

      "Ten minutes!??? You need to find better porn!"

    5. Re:More ads faster! by Surt · · Score: 4, Funny

      For end users, 100gb/s is almost 'enough'. It's just a hair short (about 2.5x) of the speed needed to stream uncompressed video at the highest resolution anyone is likely to seriously consider, at 240hz. Once you hit that point, you just remote your applications to wherever the data is, and forget about moving data ever again, assuming, of course, that the data is close enough to you to avoid any latency issues for interactivity.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    6. Re:More ads faster! by afidel · · Score: 1

      10Gb Ethernet is 8 years old and it's more than fast enough for all but a niche of applications. Heck even with high consolidation ratios most VMWare servers deployed today don't have a need for a 10Gb ethernet port. It's more useful in channelized form ala HP Flex10 or the Palo adapter in Cisco's UCS systems where you can break out specific chunks of bandwidth for various purposes.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    7. Re:More ads faster! by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      What about stereo? Multiple users?

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    8. Re:More ads faster! by Vellmont · · Score: 1

      uncompressed video? 240 frames/second?

      I'll assume you're joking and making fun of the crazy videophiles who think something like this is necessary. So well played, good sir.

      --
      AccountKiller
    9. Re:More ads faster! by Surt · · Score: 1

      Stereo is covered by the 240hz. But the multiple users .. yeah, for a family of 4, I suppose you might want to multiply by ... 4.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    10. Re:More ads faster! by Surt · · Score: 1

      240hz is needed for stereo 3d at 120hz. 120hz is the upper limit of detectability for about 98% of the population. 60hz is choppy for almost 30%.

      My point was just to figure out roughly where you could guarantee that not even the videophiles would be unlikely to complain about the quality, and 120hz is generally well received by videophiles, and unfortunately you do have to multiply whatever rate you pick by 2 for stereo 3d implementations.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    11. Re:More ads faster! by Vellmont · · Score: 1


      My point was just to figure out roughly where you could guarantee that not even the videophiles would be unlikely to complain about the quality, and 120hz is generally well received by videophiles, and unfortunately you do have to multiply whatever rate you pick by 2 for stereo 3d implementations.

      Being a videophile isn't about actual perception, it's about being superior. It's a dick measuring contest with specifications. Give them a maximum perceivable specification, and they'll imagine their way out it. You could give these people actual actors in their living room, and they'd complain about the quality of the air in the room and dust count obscuring their vision. "I think the images of the actors in the dust free room are being scattered a bit by the oxygen and nitrogen in the room. If we just had a pure vacuum that would be better. But don't interrupt the sound of course".

       

      --
      AccountKiller
    12. Re:More ads faster! by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      yeah, for a family of 4, I suppose you might want to multiply by ... 4.

      I think you're still fine. It would be fair to use something like REDCODE Raw as an upper limit for home viewership at 10GB per minute. It actually costs more to process uncompressed video these days, so nobody would put money into such silicon.

      Presumably for deployed stereo they'll come up with a 'joint-stereo'-like algorithm that doesn't duplicate the data-rate.

      And a good LDS family can used a bonded pair.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    13. Re:More ads faster! by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 1

      Even with Gigabit and 10:1 wavelet compression you're pretty much dandy. 10gb I think would be good enough with adequate compression.

    14. Re:More ads faster! by bbn · · Score: 1

      Please post your math...

      240 hz * 1920 px * 1080 px * 24 bit = 11,943,936,000 bit/s = 12 Gbit/s.

      Seems to me that you could watch multiple 1080p uncompressed videos at 240 hz at 100 Gbit/s.

    15. Re:More ads faster! by poetmatt · · Score: 1

      it's never safe to assume that there is a "good enough" ceiling of bandwidth, for personal or enterprise use.

      I know you specifically went for "end users", but honestly? this stuff is also geared at corporate. Think about it. Do you really need a SC/ST when you can replace it with ethernet? Eventually as things get higher in speeds along with better storage it enables more people to host servers themselves. what is enterprise now becomes home user. Easy examples: home theatre pc's, p2p/bittorrent, more complex gaming, all things that weren't possible 10-15 years ago.

      100gb ethernet cuts a lot of hardware costs out right away, and leaves the only reason to use fiber internally for security. Also it's not new, as others posted - this has been in development for a long time coming.

    16. Re:More ads faster! by Surt · · Score: 1

      240hz *
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Hi-Vision
      7,680 * 4,320
      * 64 bit (not 24, you don't want to have to lose accuracy in blend)
      = 509 megabit. I was actually off by a factor of 4 because I thought the 8k format was 4x2, not 8x4 before I double checked. So, sorry, it's actually worse than I thought!

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    17. Re:More ads faster! by Surt · · Score: 1

      Compression is horrible for a lot of content, so videophiles will insist on uncompressed for some applications.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    18. Re:More ads faster! by Surt · · Score: 1

      Yeah, others pointed that out ... as I responded there, you probably want to use some small multiple to allow for multiple streams.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    19. Re:More ads faster! by Surt · · Score: 1

      My point was merely that there is a concretely definable point at which, barring latency issues, you no longer need to send data to the end user, and can instead remote the output losslessly, and do the processing wherever the data lives. This is at most one order of magnitude past 100gb/s.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  5. Seriously? by Pojut · · Score: 4, Funny

    I just finally upgraded all of the connections in my house to Gigabit Ethernet, you fucking clod you!

    --
    Living With a Nerd
    1. Re:Seriously? by broken_chaos · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sorry to break it to you, but...

  6. Re:RIP OUT THE CAT5e CABLE BOYZ !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    you really think you're gonna be sending 40Gb over copper?

  7. Disc speeds by f3rret · · Score: 2

    I can't help but wonder what you could actually use 100Gbit/s for, I mean to the best of my knowledge (which is not all that vast I admit) you'd be hard pressed to find a storage unit that can handle these sorts of speeds.

    --
    Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
    1. Re:Disc speeds by afidel · · Score: 3, Interesting

      100Gb isn't for server to server or server to storage connections today, it's for network aggregation (switch to switch ISL's). 40Gb is there for server to storage on some high end configurations.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    2. Re:Disc speeds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      European internet exchange points (IXP's) such as LINX and AMS-IX are eagerly waiting 100GE. There's only so many 10GE interfaces you can aggregate together between large chasis-based switches.

    3. Re:Disc speeds by CyprusBlue113 · · Score: 1

      Interlinks. Router to switch, switch to switch, ISP to ISP, etc.

      --
      a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
    4. Re:Disc speeds by Surt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      SSDs are going to hit 6 gbit/sec in the next year or so. Multiply by 17 devices on a SAN and you're done.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    5. Re:Disc speeds by dave562 · · Score: 1

      Another thing to consider is that "100Gb" is also a measure of bandwidth. While a switch might be able to handle 100Gb, it won't be able to handle 100Gb to every port at the same time. Even on a 12 port switch that is less than 10Gb per port. That is still a lot of bandwidth, but you can obviously predict how it will degrade as the port count increases.

    6. Re:Disc speeds by evilbessie · · Score: 1

      You couldn't is the simple answer, unless you perhaps run the network at CERN. This is Tier 1 territory at the moment, eventually your corporate backbone, probably never on the desktop though. It just means you can run 10x10Gb networks through a single cable. So unless you have massive needs of say a large internet video hosting site you probably never need anything like this. In time I would expect it to filter down to medium sized business, by which time, no doubt, 1Tb/s will have been standardised, if not 10Tb. To keep everything smooth at the end you need some really hefty cables in the middle.

    7. Re:Disc speeds by Kjella · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Delivering 100 Mbit/s Internet to 1000 people before over-subscription seems like a nice application. Unless you're in the US in which case it probably covers New York.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    8. Re:Disc speeds by afidel · · Score: 1

      Yes, but there are routers with multi-terrabit backplanes, 100Gb is for connecting multiple such routers together.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    9. Re:Disc speeds by forkazoo · · Score: 1

      I can't help but wonder what you could actually use 100Gbit/s for, I mean to the best of my knowledge (which is not all that vast I admit) you'd be hard pressed to find a storage unit that can handle these sorts of speeds.

      Just depends on what you consider a "storage unit," and what you are willing to pay for it.

      If "storage unit" means a hard drive, then no.

      If "storage unit" means a big box in a data center with room for hundreds of drives, then yes you will be able to find interesting uses for this speed right now.

    10. Re:Disc speeds by bertok · · Score: 1

      SSDs are going to hit 6 gbit/sec in the next year or so. Multiply by 17 devices on a SAN and you're done.

      Those are consumer grade devices. Many SSDs are already well above 10Gbit speeds, and I fully expect 20Gbit in a single PCI-e card this year or early next year. Just 5 of those could saturate 100Gbit!

    11. Re:Disc speeds by Surt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      True, though many a small business has a SAN built on consumer grade devices. My point was exactly that the low end will be pushing up against this limit all too soon.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    12. Re:Disc speeds by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      Look up Storage Area Network, and Trunking.

      There is never, ever a such thing as "too much bandwidth". You're just thinking too small, that's all.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    13. Re:Disc speeds by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      That was his point.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    14. Re:Disc speeds by evilviper · · Score: 1

      you'd be hard pressed to find a storage unit that can handle these sorts of speeds.

      If it was needed "NOW" it would be getting manufactured and sold NOW. It's not. It's just now getting standardized, so the hardware can be developed, and come out at a reasonable price a few years in the future, when it will in fact be needed.

      We've had 10GBit ethernet for quite some time now, and yet the cards still cost $1,000 a pop. So if you could find a use for that much speed (and many do) you might find the cost prohibitive, and would hope it had been developed a couple years earlier, so the price would have had more time to drop.

      10Gbit infiniband, however, costs about 1/3rd as much, much higher speeds are available right now, and 100Gbit+ infiniband is supposedly planned for next year. So, if there's a question to be asked, it's whether ethernet is even going to be the LAN standard of the future, versus something with lower latency, processing overhead and cost.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    15. Re:Disc speeds by guruevi · · Score: 1

      The interconnect will be 6Gbit/s and the highest interconnects I've seen commercially used are bonded 4 * 10Gbit/s (40Gbit/s) mainly for redundancy and latency. At 50MB/s (400Mbit/s) you'll need at least 100 of them to fill the bandwidth - enterprise SSD's don't sell for $200/32GB, try $2000.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    16. Re:Disc speeds by Surt · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure who you're replying to ... I didn't say anything about pricing. And even consumer level SSDs are already at 250MB/s, not 50.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    17. Re:Disc speeds by evilviper · · Score: 1

      10GbE adaptors do not cost $1000's.

      Thanks for the link. That's the cheapest I've seen 10Gbit, but that still leaves infiniband cards of the same speed at 1/5th the price.

      Infiniband is also not suitable for switched IP networks

      I'm listening. Infiniband switches and routers are widely available, and cheaper than their ethernet equivalents. Similarly, IPoIB has been around for quite a while. In fact Infiniband was designed with substantial similarity to IPv6 in mind, and can transport IPv6 packets natively (with a few notable restrictions). So please tell me, what is it that makes you think infiniband is not suitable?

      Additionally, I should say that the "IP networks" part should be removed. Part of my idea is to get away from IP on the LAN, if possible. A better IPC method would be a boon, and is long overdue. Where it's routed out to the WAN and the cloud, it can be converted into IP. On the LAN, it could reasonably be just about anything. After all, IPX networks coexisted with IP and the like for many years.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  8. About Time! by Above · · Score: 2, Funny

    I've been waiting to connect to my 8M Cable modem with 100GE for a while now. Finally, no more bottleneck!

    1. Re:About Time! by vlm · · Score: 1

      I've been waiting to connect to my 8M Cable modem with 100GE for a while now. Finally, no more bottleneck!

      The inter-router links that connect your CMTS back at the headend might, eventually, be 100GE. 100GE would be about 12K customers at full blast. With reasonable oversubscription ratios, figure the headend for a small city, or "a major portion" of a large city.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  9. 100Gb/sec by wolrahnaes · · Score: 1

    That's:

    9102 full 3.5" floppy disks (1.44MB)
    18 full CDs (700MB)
    1 full DVD (8.54GB)

    Every second, with room to spare (I just counted complete transfers).

    Of course I'm still waiting on 10g to be affordable for LAN use and barely get 10m to the WAN, so I'm sure the various **AAs aren't afraid of this for now.

    --
    I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
    1. Re:100Gb/sec by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 1

      That's:

      9102 full 3.5" floppy disks (1.44MB)
      18 full CDs (700MB)
      1 full DVD (8.54GB)

      Every second, with room to spare (I just counted complete transfers).

      CD and DVD capacities and transfer rates are measured in metric units, and 1.44 "MB" floppies are a combination of one metric and one binary measure (1.44 "MB" * 1024000 bytes/"MB"). Still, 8 bits per byte, so 100 Gb/s is 12.5 GB/s.

      Using the correct units, I get:

      1 DVD
      17 CDs
      8477 floppies

      Consider a 1.44 "MB" floppy is defined using two different definitions for a kilobyte: a 1000 B/KB and a 1024 B/KiB factor.

      (1.44 "MB"/floppy * 1024000 bytes/"MB" == 1474560 B/floppy; / 1,000,000,000 bytes/GB == .00147456 GB/floppy; 100 Gb/s * 1B/8b == 12.5 GB/s; 12.5 GB/s / .00147456 GB/floppy > 8477 floppies/sec).

      In practice though, it is one floppy, one CD, and one DVD across the board, because it takes more than one second to swap each of them. And that's assuming you've pre-cached the first disk to memory since you're not going to find a drive that can read one 3.5" floppy disk that fast, and I doubt a DVD could even survive the RPMs necessary to read it that fast, let alone a CD.

      --
      Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
    2. Re:100Gb/sec by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but how many Libraries of Congress per Fortnight? (LoC/Fn)

      Go for it, math boy! Show us what you got!

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    3. Re:100Gb/sec by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      6,032 LoC/Fn.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    4. Re:100Gb/sec by wolrahnaes · · Score: 1

      CD and DVD capacities and transfer rates are measured in metric units, and 1.44 "MB" floppies are a combination of one metric and one binary measure (1.44 "MB" * 1024000 bytes/"MB"). Still, 8 bits per byte, so 100 Gb/s is 12.5 GB/s.

      Using the correct units, I get:

      1 DVD
      17 CDs
      8477 floppies

      Consider a 1.44 "MB" floppy is defined using two different definitions for a kilobyte: a 1000 B/KB and a 1024 B/KiB factor.

      (1.44 "MB"/floppy * 1024000 bytes/"MB" == 1474560 B/floppy; / 1,000,000,000 bytes/GB == .00147456 GB/floppy; 100 Gb/s * 1B/8b == 12.5 GB/s; 12.5 GB/s / .00147456 GB/floppy > 8477 floppies/sec).

      I used the following capacities in my calculations:

      3.5" Floppy: 1,474,560 bytes (11,796,480 bits)
      80 minute CD-R: 360,000 sectors at 2,048 bytes each (Mode 1) = 737,280,000 bytes (5,898,240,000 bits)
      DVD+R DL: 4,173,824 sectors at 2,048 bytes = 8,547,991,552 bytes (68,383,932,416 bits)

      Our discrepancies in numbers seem to come from the fact that I did my math lazily using Google Calculator and queries such as "100 gigabits / X bytes". Google uses the binary meaning of 107,374,182,400 bits as the value for 100 gigabits, rather than the SI definition of 100,000,000,000 bits.

      In practice though, it is one floppy, one CD, and one DVD across the board, because it takes more than one second to swap each of them. And that's assuming you've pre-cached the first disk to memory since you're not going to find a drive that can read one 3.5" floppy disk that fast, and I doubt a DVD could even survive the RPMs necessary to read it that fast, let alone a CD.

      Of course. Just using the capacities of familiar media to put things in perspective for those who may not spend their days maxing out networks.

      --
      I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
  10. Re:IEEE 802.3ba code name by cmg · · Score: 5, Funny

    Unfortunately there is no corresponding 100000Base-MrT

  11. Shame about the MTU by elFarto+the+2nd · · Score: 4, Funny

    The MTU is still 1500 bytes though :(

    1. Re:Shame about the MTU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Jumbo frames, dear boy. Jumbo frames.

      Which have been around since 1Gb ethernet.

    2. Re:Shame about the MTU by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      When are we going to get uber frames though?

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    3. Re:Shame about the MTU by elFarto+the+2nd · · Score: 1

      Wow, 9000 bytes, that makes all the difference. And beside, Jumbo frames aren't officially recognised by the 802 spec. Just think how much work is a processor going to have to do to fill a 100Gb/s link with 1500 or 9000 byte packets?

  12. Pardon my ignorance by RingDev · · Score: 1

    But are we talking about 100Gb/s over copper or fiber?

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
    1. Re:Pardon my ignorance by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 1

      You can run it a very short distance with fat copper cables, but almost everyone will use fiber.

    2. Re:Pardon my ignorance by Shimbo · · Score: 4, Informative

      But are we talking about 100Gb/s over copper or fiber?

      -Rick

      Fibre and short-haul (~10m) copper, at least for the current standard. Historically, there's usually a lag of several years between a new Ethernet standard and a 100m copper version.

      I'm a bit sceptical about folks who say they'll never be a copper version, because I've heard that tale often enough before. I confidently predict it will be the Year of Linux on the desktop before it's the year of Fibre to the Desktop.

    3. Re:Pardon my ignorance by afidel · · Score: 1

      The copper solution requires twinax, might as well run fiber as it's easier to deal with at length and can actually fit into the existing raceways (twinax is huge). There's not enough bandwidth and S/N margin in even Cat6A to do 100Gb at 100m, you need Cat7A which was just approved late last year and which requires a full plant re-work who's going to do that when a OM3 fiber installation should be good all the way to 1000Gb.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    4. Re:Pardon my ignorance by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Twinax isn't too big, it's the bundle of 10 twinax you need to run 100gbit that are huge.

      I'm a little confused, though. Cat6 is capable of 10GbE, so why not bundles of 4 and 10 Cat6 for the standard as well, instead of just twinaxial? I recognize you'd need a special port setup, but that would still be significantly smaller than twinax. They would then be capable of 100m, would they not?

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    5. Re:Pardon my ignorance by Ster · · Score: 1

      The copper solution requires twinax, might as well run fiber as it's easier to deal with at length and can actually fit into the existing raceways (twinax is huge).

      I think you're thinking of CX4, which is indeed huge. 10Gb TwinAx comes in SFP+, which is the same port that you use for 10Gb fiber.

    6. Re:Pardon my ignorance by afidel · · Score: 1

      OM3 has a typical jacket diameter of 2mm vs 6-8mm for twinax and 8-9mm for 7a, cat 5e is closer to 4-5mm typically. When you have hundreds of runs in a raceway it makes a big difference.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  13. Re:RIP OUT THE CAT5e CABLE BOYZ !! by d3matt · · Score: 1

    over short distances...

    --
    I am d3matt
  14. Re:Crazy speeds are playing games w/ my mind! by siddesu · · Score: 1

    Well, I am a bit older than that, and I was so overwhelmed by the speeds of modern computers, that I switched to programming microcontrollers for fun. With chips running at few MHz, having just a few kb of ram and 9600 bps available to talk to them, I feel right at home, and comfortable. ;)

  15. Hardware Vendors Giddy by Revotron · · Score: 1

    Do these people seriously think we're going to see 40Gbps servers any time soon?

    I can't wait to see the list prices on the ensuing flood of modules.

    Cisco 40Gbps SFP: $50,000/unit
    Cisco switch equipped to handle them: $300,000+/chassis
    Intel 40Gbps Server NIC: $10,000/unit
    Server with a completely new bus technology built to handle them: If you have to ask...

    Get your cost centers out, it's time to upgrade!

    1. Re:Hardware Vendors Giddy by afidel · · Score: 1

      Nope, more like Intel 40Gbps NIC, $1500. They went out of their way to reuse existing technologies to bring the price per port down at launch.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    2. Re:Hardware Vendors Giddy by QuantumRiff · · Score: 1

      If I have a blade server, with 10 blades, each one running several virtual machines.. Do I want to deal with a each blade having at least two nics, and all that cabling, plus either FC cards, or additional 1GB iScsi cards?

      Or do I want the back of the chasis for the blade server to just have two 40GB/s network connections?

      --

      What are we going to do tonight Brain?
    3. Re:Hardware Vendors Giddy by drmerope · · Score: 1

      These people? At the moment interest in 40G/100G is related to aggregating 10G server connections, not in running 10G to the server.

  16. 802.3ba takes on cool name by theanyday · · Score: 1

    I think the ba stands for badass... I'm just sayin'.

  17. One cable to rule them all by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    USB3, HDMI, DVI, Ethernet, DisplayPort, FireWire, eSATA, proprietary. There should be one kind cable that can be used for all of these purposes. We have the technology. Consumers will thank you.

    1. Re:One cable to rule them all by MachineShedFred · · Score: 2, Informative

      They actually tried this with FireWire (IEEE-1394) in the consumer electronics industry back in 2000-ish, but then the whole HDCP thing came up, and that was that.

      The idea is that you'd have a home theater receiver that just had a crapload of firewire ports on the back, and all your stuff would plug in via that, including speakers. Never happened though.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    2. Re:One cable to rule them all by Nemyst · · Score: 1

      Wait, you want ONE cable to rule them all? You do realize the average consumer already has enough problems understanding how YPbPr cables work (green in green, blue in blue, red in red, no not the audio!)? Making all things unified would just mean more money for BestBuy's installation services. Either that or lots of people would be watching their music and hearing their network.

    3. Re:One cable to rule them all by Rene+S.+Hollan · · Score: 1

      I dunno. HDMI 1.4 now sports ethernet and audio return channels. About the only thing absent is USB for low/high speed data (keyboards or mice / disk drives: 100 Mb/s ethernet is a little slow for disks).

      So, I suppose it will factor out to three cable types: HDMI for "media" connections that are video-centric, ethernet for long distance data and networking connections, and USB for local data and peripherals. Maybe add 1394 (firewire) for video capture and control, though GbE and even 100 Mb/s ethernet could serve that purpose (my Motorola DCH3200 has an ethernet port on it, but video is transferred over 1394).

      Is four cable types too much?

      Considering that each type already has a primary purpose, and that it lets us get rid of serial, mouse, keyboard, and parallel cables, I think it's still an improvement.

      --
      In Liberty, Rene
    4. Re:One cable to rule them all by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 1

      OSI Network model. Separate the physical layer from the application layers and everything in between.

    5. Re:One cable to rule them all by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 1

      They actually tried this with FireWire (IEEE-1394) in the consumer electronics industry back in 2000-ish, but then the whole HDCP thing came up, and that was that.

      It probably would have worked if Apple had allowed it to succeed. They always fuck that kind of shit up.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    6. Re:One cable to rule them all by evilviper · · Score: 2, Insightful

      USB3, HDMI, DVI, Ethernet, DisplayPort, FireWire, eSATA, proprietary. There should be one kind cable that can be used for all of these purposes.

      HDMI/DVI/DisplayPort are for raw video data. They have NOTHING in common with the USB mouse/keyboard on your desk. It makes no sense to combine them.

      There's some good reasons for the differences. For instance, even if I could hook up my internet access to the same port as my hard drives, I never would... One needs low-overhead, realtime and no security, while the other is high overhead, delays are better than realtime constraints, and needs much more security.

      While you have a point about the display ports, it's far worse to have only one type available, which always sucks.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    7. Re:One cable to rule them all by ufoolme · · Score: 1

      Hopefully one day people might see the light...

  18. Re:RIP OUT THE CAT5e CABLE BOYZ !! by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 3, Informative

    The standard includes specifications for copper. 40GBASE-CR4 for 40GB which specifies 4 lanes of twinax cable, and 100GBASE-CR10 for 100GB which specifies 10 lanes of twinax.

    Surprise, surprise. Serial too slow? Try parallel!

    --
    The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
  19. Re:The Eighties called... by Tetsujin · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... and wants its A-Team back. Your meme is violating some copyright somewhere.

    Was "I pity the fool" even in The A-Team? I watched like the first two or three seasons of the show and I don't recall Mr. T ever saying it. It was in Rocky III though...

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.
  20. C-64 porn by Tetsujin · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes, but the porn was low-res and slow to download. So it's a double-edged sword.

    Still, I think you're underrating the merits of the slow reveal... I mean, as the image file was loaded byte by byte onto the computer's memory, filling the display with that lustworthy graphical data, gradually revealing more and more, until you had a naked woman on your screen in 320x200 glory, 1bpp plus 4 bit colors, foreground and background, per 8x8 character cell... The five minute wait for the elusive delights to be laid plain was like a striptease...

    And when I say 5-minute wait, that's how long it took to load an image from disk. Modem would take longer. :)

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.
    1. Re:C-64 porn by MrEricSir · · Score: 3, Informative

      The image format changes the strip-tease.

      BMP loads from the bottom-up. It's Sir Mix-a-lot's favorite format.

      Progressive JPEG gets less blurry as it loads, simulating being drunk at a strip club.

      --
      There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
  21. Light Peak by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2, Insightful

    USB3, HDMI, DVI, Ethernet, DisplayPort, FireWire, eSATA, proprietary. There should be one kind cable that can be used for all of these purposes. We have the technology. Consumers will thank you.

    Are you here from Intel marketing?

    <wp:Light_Peak>

    Oh, heck, that's still not working. fine:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  22. Re:The Eighties called... by macraig · · Score: 1, Funny

    No, Overrated wasn't what I had in mind, either....

  23. Re:RIP OUT THE CAT5e CABLE BOYZ !! by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There isn't a whole lot of difference between the raw speed of the signal in a copper line and fiber line, the electrical signal already travels at effectively the speed of light (or close enough that it doesn't really matter). It's distance that's a problem for copper. An electrical signal through copper has significantly more attenuation than an optical signal through fiber, which means right from the very start the signal is cleaner and more usable. The cleaner the signal, the easier it is to pick up small variations in the signal accurately, and the more data you can pack into the signal. Copper is also vulnerable to noise, which further reduces the signal quality, which means a less complex signal is possible. This is why copper is useful for ultra-high speed IO inside a computer covering inches or less (the IO in a CPU travels only nanometers and is obscenely fast), but once you start stretching it a few feet its effectiveness drops off dramatically. Fiber is capable of handling much longer distances before the same attenuation loss occurs.

    Other than that it's just the equipment on the back end that are different, and the concepts behind both fiber and copper are the same. Only the components are different.

    In other words, it's trivial to make copper just as fast or faster than fiber. In fact, the fastest copper connections are already faster than the fastest fiber connections. What isn't trivial is making copper as fast as fiber over the same distances. Fiber wins hands down on a run of any distance. Therefor copper only wins on short runs, due to the huge price difference between the two.

    --
    Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  24. Re:RIP OUT THE CAT5e CABLE BOYZ !! by QuantumRiff · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Well, if you plan ahead, you account for the attenuation in the cable. You can then counteract it, and get much greater distances. I know the strongest electromagnetic signal in my area is a country radio station, with a tower a few miles away. To counter that, I play hip hop, all day and all night, in my server room. Keeps my distribution switch from getting slowed down and depressed from the country music.

    --

    What are we going to do tonight Brain?
  25. Re:RIP OUT THE CAT5e CABLE BOYZ !! by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 1

    Then why the hell is Parallel ATA giving way to Serial ATA?

    --
    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  26. Re:Who wrote this? by CyberDragon777 · · Score: 1

    "The new standard will act as the catalyst needed for unlocking innovation across the greater Ethernet ecosystem."

    Duh, Cisco marketing!

    --
    We both said a lot of things that you are going to regret.
  27. Re:RIP OUT THE CAT5e CABLE BOYZ !! by corerunner · · Score: 1

    because it's over short distances and serial isn't too slow

    --
    "Don't hate the media, become the media." -Jello Biafra