IEEE Releases 802.3ba Standard

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."

Comments

Much welcomed tech

[mnmn]

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...

Re:Much welcomed tech

[afidel]

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.

Re:Stuck

[Monkeedude1212]

You know networking exists outside of the internet, right?

Seriously?

[Pojut]

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

Re:More ads faster!

[MrEricSir]

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

Re:IEEE 802.3ba code name

[cmg]

Unfortunately there is no corresponding 100000Base-MrT

Shame about the MTU

[elFarto the 2nd]

The MTU is still 1500 bytes though :(

Re:Shame about the MTU

[Anonymous Coward]

Jumbo frames, dear boy. Jumbo frames.

Which have been around since 1Gb ethernet.

Re:More ads faster!

[Surt]

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.

Re:Pardon my ignorance

[Shimbo]

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.

One cable to rule them all

[Citizen of Earth]

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.

Re:RIP OUT THE CAT5e CABLE BOYZ !!

[Bigjeff5]

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.