Ethernet knows where it's going: 100 Gigabits
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(InfoWorld) - Ethernet will keep accelerating, speeding up to 100G bps (bits per second) in the next few years, the head of a standards study group said Wednesday. A special study group of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. (IEEE) last Thursday agreed on a target for the next generation of the ubiquitous data networking technology. The 100G-bps version of Ethernet will be 10 times faster than the current fastest type, 10-Gigabit Ethernet. But vendors as well as users represented in the group, including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and cable operator Comcast Corp., see a need for that kind of speed down the road, said John D'Ambrosia, chair of the group. It will serve the needs of both enterprises and carriers, he said. Ethernet was introduced more than 30 years ago and became popular as a 10M-bps system for enterprise LANs. Along the way, Fast Ethernet (100M bps), Gigabit Ethernet and 10-Gigabit Ethernet have been added. Because each was standardized, many vendors have been able to compete and prices have been driven down. New Ethernet versions began life aggregating streams of packets from lower-speed connections and, in turn, were later aggregated into fatter pipes that used the latest high speed. Video, high-performance computing and the increasing demands of applications in data centers will require faster connections, said D'Ambrosia, who is also scientist of components technology at high-end Ethernet switch vendor Force10 Networks Inc. The study group was formed in July to decide what speed the IEEE should try to achieve in the next standard. Last Thursday at an IEEE meeting in Dallas, 100G bps achieved the required 75 percent vote within the study group. Other possible speeds were considered, including 40G bps, 80G bps and 120G bps, but none of them garnered enough backing. The group weighed the time and effort required to achieve a speed against how well it would meet the needs that exist when it becomes available, D'Ambrosia said. Between that vote and 100G bps Ethernet hitting the market, the IEEE needs to approve the formation of a working group that will then figure out how to achieve the higher speed. Judging from the development of earlier standards, D'Ambrosia said standard 100G bps Ethernet products are likely to become available in late 2009 or early 2010. The challenges this time will be similar to those in the past, only harder, he said. Among them are heat and power requirements and enabling faster communication among the chips inside networking equipment. Like other steps up in Ethernet speed, it is likely to appear first in gear that uses optical fiber. Getting it to work over copper wires will be harder than ever, D'Ambrosia said, but he wouldn't rule it out. The cycle never ends, he said. "This will never be the last higher speed study group," D'Ambrosia said. "We'll get this done and eventually there will be a push for another speed after this."
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The NYT has an optimistic overview on broadband over power lines, calling it "the ultimate plug and play." [Broadband Blog]
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A new high-speed, IP-based network will connect more than 1,000 domestic locations and tens of thousand of users in the US and overseas.
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Number of users with high-speed connections has tripled in the last three years.
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A 7200rpm unit that's as fast as a 10,000rpm job, apparently
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Falling prices for 10-Gbps Ethernet switches may spur a new round of network upgrades by businesses looking to provide more speed for bandwidth-hungry applications.
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Think of it as Wi-Fi on steroids. On its way to U.S. living rooms and maybe even automobiles is a new type of high-speed wireless connection that promises downloaded data rates of up to 1 gigabit per second -- roughly 18.5 times the speed of Wi-Fi -- to personal computers and other devices.
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The Story: Some technologies always seem to be ?just around the corner.? Seven years ago, there was a big flurry of interest in end-to-end Ethernet (aka metro Ethernet) as a brace of new ventures promised to cut through the complexities of wide area networking.[ Slideshow: 2007's top underreported tech stories ]                                                    They didn?t deliver. One big reason: building a new network that will reach into offices and homes costs beaucoup bucks. As IDC analyst Boyd Chastant puts it, ?Digging a whole in the ground never gets cheaper.?Laying fiber is still expensive, but now telcos ? including AT&amp;T, Verizon, and Qwest ? plus cable companies such as Optimum LightPath, Cox, and Time Warner that already have fiber in the ground are offering Ethernet services. LightPath, for example, boasts of 2,500 miles of fiber in the ground and says it has lit more than 2,000 buildings in its service area in the northeast.End-to-end Ethernet offers a very affordable way to connect LANs to a wide area network. After all, every router has an Ethernet interface, you don?t need much special hardware, and the technology is very familiar. So most IT staffers will have little trouble adapting, says Burton Group analyst Jeff Young. That is, if you can get it: Pricing depends on your need for speed, and not all of the providers offer it throughout their service areas.Raw bandwidth isn?t Ethernet?s big advantage. It?s not necessarily much faster than private lines. However, says Chastant, it is more scalable. Conventional private-line services offer speeds near the bottom (around 10Mbps) and the near top (around 10Gbps), but not much in the middle. End-to-end Ethernet solves that. And it can be tied to Internet access, bumping up access speeds appreciably.Availability is on the upswing too, says Boyd. In the past, carriers worried that end-to-end Ethernet service would cannibalize other data services. But now that demand has reached critical mass, that concern appears to have faded. Meanwhile, providers and equipment manufacturers are ironing out incompatibles and clarifying service definitions in the Metro Ethernet Forum, Chastant says.It looks like we?ve turned the corner and end-to-end Ethernet is right in front of us.The Bottom Line: If your carrier doesn?t provide end-to-end Ethernet, another provider likely does. It?s worth the trouble to look: End-to-end Ethernet will give you the performance you need and because it?s a familiar technology you won?t have to retrain or replace your IT staff.Complete list of 2007 underreported stories: 1.? Java is becoming the new Cobol 2.? Sun Microsystems is back in the game 3.? Hackers take aim at Mac OS X 4.? There are some threats you can worry less about 5.? Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits 6.? Open source?s new commercial strategy 7.? End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives 8.? Blade servers arrive for the masses 9.? BI is dead; long live BI 10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
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Analysis Prospects bright in the Wi-Fi arena
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Vendors Hewlett Packard, Alcatel and S2io each announced 10 Gigabit Ethernet products Monday that are aimed squarely at enterprise data centers.
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100s of megabits for hundreds of pounds A corporate Ethernet price war could be on the cards, with a newcomer using Next Generation Network (NGN) technology to offer 100 megabit Ethernet for Â£800 a month.â¦
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Throughput improvements to 200 kilobits per second (up from between 70 kbps and 135 kbps) noted by multiple users.
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Universal Serial Bus will be overhauled with optical data links for a tenfold bandwidth increase, Intel promises. The spec is due in 2008.
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As the Internet turned 35 last week, Web speed-demons claimed a new record for how fast data can be transmitted over computer networks, announcing they had sent the equivalent of a big fat DVD movie file from Switzerland to California in a few seconds.
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Wireless computer networks could soon be running 10 times faster than they do now.
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A new world record has been set for transmitting data across a wireless network, claim researchers in Germany. A team at Siemens Communications research laboratory in Munich, have transmitted one gigabit (one
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Powered Gig Ethernet for Â£30 a port Powered Gig Ethernet just got cheaper. Allied Telesis said its new AT-GS900/8POE switch provides eight Gigabit ports plus a fibre uplink option, all the ports are powered - either eight at 7W each or four at the full 15W - and it's only Â£230, so around Â£30 a port.â¦