More than three years after it was initially proposed as a
standard, 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) has finally been ratified by
the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
At a meeting in Washington the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance's
(10GEA) proposed specification was approved as IEEE 802.3ae.
Despite the milestone, early expectations for the adoption of 10GbE
are still, at best, modest.
Analysts and vendors alike do not foresee the technology having a
significant impact immediately but expect that in time, as the
costs of components come down, 10GbE will prove relevant in both
enterprises and in metropolitan areas.
Described as the next logical step for the Ethernet bandwidth
hierarchy, 10GbE transmits at rates up to 10Gbps and can transmit
at distances of 40 metres on a single mode fibre and up to 300
metres on multimode optical fibre.
In essence, 10GbE will increase the number of network connections
and improve the speed of Ethernet, thus allowing enterprises and
service providers alike to begin deploying more bandwidth-hungry
applications such as disaster recovery and high-quality
video.
Defined in the standard are: enhancements to the MAC (media access
control), the sublayer responsible for moving packets from one NIC
(network interface card) to the other; the PCS (physical coding
sublayer), the layer that transmits the data over the network; and
additional optional interfaces used for chip-to-chip interfaces,
XGMII (10 Gigabit Media Independent Interface), XAUI (10 Gigabit
Attachment Unit Interface), and XSBI (10 Gigabit Serial Bus
Interface).
According to Val Oliva, a chair on The 10GEA's technical committee,
the roadblock that will initially slow the adoption of 10GbE in the
enterprise is the cost. "10GbE is still too expensive for the
enterprises, especially because right now it is a capital
expenditure," Oliva said. "But as the cost comes down, enterprises
will become more interested."
Most enterprises today have neither the need nor the budget for so
much bandwidth. But some anticipate a need in the near
future.
"We're about a year away from deploying 10GbE, because frankly the
server I/Os are not fast enough," said Matt Kesner, CTO at Fenwick
& West, a California-based law firm primarily serving
high-technology clients. "But it might be sooner if the price drops
dramatically."
Once the cost comes down from around $17,000 a port today to $1,000
a port late next year - as estimated by Mark Fishburn,
vice-president of technical strategy at Spirent Communications -
and as bandwidth requirements increase, it is widely believed that
10GbE will first show up where 1Gb or faster links are required
today.
Fishburn predicts that using 10GbE, rather than multiple Gigabit
links, will boost performance significantly. "Where there is link
aggregation, 10GbE will deliver good performance immediately," he
said.
Additionally, enterprises with heavy storage requirements are
likely to adopt 10GbE early. Singling out IP-based storage, Oliva
said that 10GbE is excellent for bandwidth-intensive applications
such as disaster recovery or backup over the WAN.
However, the immediate market for 10GbE is clearly in MANs
(metropolitan area network). Providers offering Ethernet services
today in the MAN are looking at 10GbE technology, Fishburn
said.
Fishburn said that because 10GbE is compatible with existing SONet
(Synchronous Optical Network)-based OC-192c systems, service
providers will probably use the technology when their bandwidth
demands increase. "With IP traffic growth still being forecasted to
grow 100% year-on-year, service providers will increasingly turn to
10GbE as it is significantly cheaper than SONet-based systems,"
Fishburn said.
He estimated that a OC-192c SONet system today costs approximately
$200,000 per port and that 10GbE vendors are talking about $40,000
to $60,000 per port late next year. "Gigabit pricing went down
rapidly and we anticipate 10GbE pricing to do the same," Fishburn
said.
A slew of vendors have already announced the availability and
interoperability of NICs (network interface cards) and components
for the creation of 10GbE systems.
Earlier this month at Supercomm, the annual communication and
networking conference, Infineon Technologies introduced two 10GbE
XAUI-to-serial transceivers, the TenGiPHY-W and TenGiPHY-L. These
devices were developed to reside in 10GbE line cards, Ethernet
backbones, storage network interface cards, and terabit
routers.
Additionally, Alcatel introduced a new 10Gb multimode fibre, dubbed
GLight. According to the company the new fibre can deliver
throughput as fast as 10Gbps over distances as far as 300
meters.
More than 20 vendors demonstrated the interoperability of 10GbE
with 20 network devices including switches, test equipment,
components, and fibre optics.