I still like to follow what is happening IEEE is doing on Ethernet standardization, although there has been around 10 years since I last time was part of the process. I was participating in Ethernet in the first mile (EFM) standardization work at years 2000-2001 (at that time I worked for Nokia).
There is always something new coming. Now IEEE Seeks Data On Ethernet Bandwidth Needs. The IEEE has formed a group to assess demand for a faster form of Ethernet, taking the first step toward what could become a Terabit Ethernet standard. This time around, the information gathered may help the next high-speed Ethernet group decide whether to aim for 1T bps or 400G bps. There are much more significant challenges involved in achieving Terabit Ethernet than there are in 400G bps. The ad hoc group has met a few times since late February.
There is also push is on to cut 100G Ethernet’s price. Less than a year after 100-Gigabit Ethernet was standardized, an industry group is considering a set of specifications that might make the high-speed technology less expensive and more useful. The IEEE 802.3 100-Gigabit Backplane and Copper Cable Study Group of the IEEE try to make it easier to build modules with more 100GE ports. The effort to develop specifications for 100GE backplanes and narrow cable interface. Standardization of the backplane should help 100GE move beyond proprietary designs and create a larger ecosystem of component vendors.
11 Comments
Tomi says:
Beat the top 3 limiting constraints in 100G designs
http://www.eetimes.com/design/communications-design/4216552/Beat-the-top-3-limiting-constraints-in-100G-designs?Ecosystem=communications-design
Expanding video, graphics, and social networking are driving projected Internet traffic in a hockey stick-like upward curve to reach 50 billion connected devices by 2020.
To meet the demand, network systems designers remain hard at work overcoming hardware constraints for 100G in aggregate or more designs. This projected growth demands increased speed, bandwidth, and throughput, which have pressed network designers into a constraint-bound corner.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Keeping time on 40/100G networks with high-performance clocks
http://www.eetimes.com/design/embedded/4231313/Keeping-time-on-40-100G-networks-with-high-performance-clocks
In this Product How-To article, James Wilson of Silicon Labs describes the clocking requirements in next generation 10G to 100G networks using high speed optical links
There are four key challenges for clock generation in 40/100G optical line cards: frequency flexibility, clock jitter, cross-talk mitigation and phased-locked loop (PLL) integration.
Since 40/100G systems often must support a variety of protocols, including OTU3, OTU4, 10GbE and 100GbE, they also require multiple reference frequencies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Understanding Skew in 100GBASE-R4 applications
http://www.eetimes.com/design/industrial-control/4233212/Understanding-Skew-in-100GBASE-R4-applications?Ecosystem=communications-design
The 100GBASE-R4 physical layer device converts 10-lanes running 10Gbps (CAUI) to 4-lanes running 25Gbps.
The 20-lane output from the PCS interfaces to the first PMA, which multiplexes the 20-logical lanes to generate the pin-efficient CAUI interface. The CAUI interface defines 10-lanes running 10.3125Gbps.
Recently ratified, the 100Gigabit Ethernet Standard, (IEEE802.3ba) defines a 100GBASE-LR4 and 100GBASE-ER4 interface for optical interfaces on single-mode fiber. The architecture includes the Physical Coding sub layer (PCS), connected on one side to the reconciliation sub-layer (RS) and MAC and to the PMA/PMD on the other side.
The IEEE standard for 100GBASE-LR4 and 100GBASE-ER4 communications defines a lane alignment strategy at the PCS layers that simplifies system design.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco Nexus ports stretched to take 40GE and 100GE loads
Catalyst campus switches bumped up to 40GE
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/cisco_40ge_100ge_switches/
If you want 10 Gigabit Ethernet to take off on servers, then you need fat backbones on the campuses and in the data centers to absorb the increase in traffic. And so Cisco Systems is ramping up the bandwidth on its Nexus 7000 series of end-of-row converged Ethernet switches as well as on its Catalyst 6500 campus switches.
Server motherboard makers are expected to start laying down 10GE ports on their boards in greater numbers, and that is when the 10GE ramp will take off in earnest.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Approaches to testing 100G networking equipment designs
http://www.edn.com/blog/Scope_Guru_on_Signal_Integrity/41717-Approaches_to_testing_100G_networking_equipment_designs.php?cid=EDNToday_20120411
Many of the 100G demonstrations at OFC 2012 focused on testing four-lane (4×25G/4×28G) implementations with electrical/PHY tests on a couple of key measurement parameters:
The BER performance tied to an eye diagram
The amount of crosstalk evident in the jitter results
What does this mean for test labs around the high-speed networking industry?
Along with the scope, a BER tester suitable for 25+ G makes sense, for a couple of reasons. First, the BER tester can serve as a test-pattern generator to help determine stress points in a measurement setup (stimulate crosstalk aggressors, for example). It can also be used to evaluate true bit-error-rate calculations, as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadcom aims to spread 100-Gbit Ethernet with single-chip solution
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4371652/Broadcom-aims-to-spread-100Gbit-Ethernet-with-single-chip-solution?Ecosystem=communications-design
Broadcom Corp. Tuesday (April 24) announced its fourth-generation Ethernet network processor, which it claims is the industry’s first chip to use massive parallelism by virtue of its 64 packet-processing cores running at one gigahertz. Providing full-duplex 100Gbit per second performance, it can also be configured to provide a dozen 10-Gbit channels.
Using 40-nanometer design rules for its array of 64 packet processors, the BCM88030 also includes seven on-chip accelerators for common functions including a programmable algorithmic look-up engine for massive IPv6 tables using low cost DDR-3 DRAM, algorithmic access control list using Broadcom’s proprietary knowledge based processor, as well as a high-speed packet parser and classifier.
“By 2015, there will be twice as many devices connected to the Internet as there are people in the world, many of which will be streaming video,”
Broadcom claims that by the end of 2012, the number of Internet-connected devices will exceed 7 billion. Over the next four years the majority of the content accessed from mobile devices will be high-bandwidth streaming video, according to Broadcom. What’s worse, application downloads will balloon to 47 billion per year, according to the firm.
To meet this demand, Internet service providers are quickly adopting 100-gigabit-per-second Ethernet, which is estimated to grow at a rate of 170 percent over the next five years, according to Infonetics Research Inc. (Campbell, Calif.)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadcom aims to spread 100-Gbit Ethernet with single-chip solution
http://www.edn.com/article/521595-Broadcom_aims_to_spread_100_Gbit_Ethernet_with_single_chip_solution.php?cid=EDNToday_20120425
Broadcom Corp Tuesday (April 24) announced its fourth-generation Ethernet network processor, which it claims is the industry’s first chip to use massive parallelism by virtue of its 64 packet-processing cores running at one gigahertz. Providing full-duplex 100Gbit per second performance, it can also be configured to provide a dozen 10-Gbit channels.
Broadcom claims that by the end of 2012, the number of Internet-connected devices will exceed 7 billion.
“By 2015, there will be twice as many devices connected to the Internet as there are people in the world, many of which will be streaming video,” said Dan Harding, senior director of marketing, infrastructure and networking at Broadcom. “As a result of this increasing demand for bandwidth, the core of the network is going to need upgrading to 100Gbit Ethernet over the next four years.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Ethernet Alliance is thinking fast
Terabit speeds are round the corner
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/02/ethernet_alliance/
Without Ethernet our networked world would cease to exist. Without Ethernet development the internet will choke.
The Ethernet Alliance brings together vendors, including AT&T, Brocade, Cisco, Dell, NetApp, QLogic and many others, dedicated to the expansion of the Ethernet ecosystem that makes this networked world work.
Kipp believes Ethernet is a marvel. “It’s the ubiquitous standard for local area networks, and as emerging applications push the innovation boundary you’d be hard-pressed to find one that doesn’t rely on Ethernet somewhere along the line. It’s truly the network technology of choice,” he says.
“The internet is probably Ethernet’s greatest triumph. Every server that delivers content to the internet is networked via Ethernet.
Scott G. Kipp
“Society is moving to a new level of interconnectedness that’s built solidly upon the Ethernet ecosystem. Think about some of the applications that have become a permanent part of today’s technology mosaic – Facebook, Twitter, Skype – those technologies are served up via Ethernet.”
At a time when the networking world is thinking practical thoughts about 40GbE and 100GbE, it is obvious to Ethernet technologists that, given the rapid data growth we are seeing, these speeds are not enough.
Where does Kipp think the future of Ethernet lies?
“It’s hard to express the full scope of where Ethernet will be in 20, ten or even just five years,” he says.
“Cisco’s Visual Networking Index predicts that in 2015, we’ll see about a zettabyte of information running across the internet. That’s about a billion terabytes. The networking world is entering the ZB era. The storage world is already there, according to IDC’s Digital Universe Study.
“We’re going to need more links at higher speed and we’re expecting 400GbE or Terabit Ethernet to be next.”
“Parallel optics will be stepping stones to tomorrow’s generation of Ethernet speeds.”
A few years ago, 100GbE would have seemed like fantasy. Today it is becoming reality.
Terabit Ethernet will surely go the same route, from technology dream through standardisation and production to everyday reality.
Ethernet trends « Tomi Engdahl’s ePanorama blog says:
[...] of my other related blog posts: News on very fast Ethernet standards Ethernet for Vehicles Ethernet networks for telecom operators 10GBase-T Technology High power PoE [...]
Tomi Engdahl says:
Spain tests live 400G fiber-optic network links
Multiple newspapers in Spain report that Telefónica España has tested DWDM channel speeds of 400 Gbps on a live fiber-optic network. The tests were carried out to check the feasibility of using 400-Gbps channels on systems already carrying live customer traffic, and to demonstrate that Telefónica’s network will be able to support very high-speed traffic needs in the future. However, the reports say the operator doesn’t anticipate installing such links on a commercial basis until 2013 at the earliest.
Source: http://www.cablinginstall.com/index/display/article-display.articles.cabling-installation-maintenance.news.connectivity-technologies.fiber-optic-connectors.2012.january.spain-tests_live_400g.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
“For 2015, we expect the bandwidth that needs to be supported to be 10 times what it was in 2010, and in 2020, 100 times what it was in 2010,” commented John D’Ambrosia, chair of the IEE’s new Higher-Speed Ethernet Consensus group that will lay the groundwork for the actual standard. A major component of that group’s work will be to determine whether 400 Gbps or 1 Tbps is a better approach, said D’Ambrosia.
Source: http://www.cablinginstall.com/index/display/article-display/7476998172/articles/cabling-installation-maintenance/news/cabling-standards/ieee/2012/august/ethernet-bandwidth.html?cmpid=EnlContractorSeptember52012