The Road to 100 Gigabit Ethernet

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The highest bandwidth commercially available via Ethernet is 10
Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE), but a grassroots effort led by Force10 Networks
is now hoping to improve that speed all the way up to 100 Gigabit or more.

100 GbE is seen by Force10 as something that will help meet the future
bandwidth needs of enterprises and could benefit a wide array of industries,
including cable and other carriers, as well as content providers.

Don’t expect to see 100 GbE anytime soon, though; it’s likely not to see
the light of day until at least 2010.

Stephen Garrison, vice president of corporate marketing at Force10 Networks, said that 10 GbE took five years from start to finish to become a standard. He
expects that 100 GbE would take at least a similar amount of time to become
a full standard. It’s still very early days for 100 GbE at this point.

“A group of companies have formed to approach the IEEE to get a vote
within the IEEE body to start a standard and that’s really where we are,”
Garrison told internetnews.com.

The vote, if it happens, would occur at the earliest in July.

The process then to becoming a full standard is a long and drawn out one
that could take five or more years. Garrison explained that the first part
of the standard will look at technical and economic feasibility, as well as
LAN and WAN opportunities.

One thing that will be up for discussion is the actual speed. As this is still a young effort, 100 GbE may or many not end up being the
final speed specified in the specification.

Through development studies conducted during the first year or so, Garrison expects that they’ll be a shakeout on what the actual speed should be — whether it’s 80 GbE, 100,120 or even 160 GbE.

“Force10 is a big believer that 100 Gig is the right step for Ethernet,
but that hasn’t been decided yet,” Garrison said.

Based on some initial surveys and research though, apparently there is a
real demand already for a higher bandwidth Ethernet. Some end users surveyed
by Force10 are already trunking 8 to 10, 10 GbE Ethernet pipes and big data
centers and carriers are already beginning to see bandwidth bottlenecks.

Before becoming a standard 100 GbE will have to overcome a variety of
challenges. Not the least of which is cabling. If enterprises need to lay
down new cable to take advantage of 100 GbE it may well prove to be a
significant barrier to adoption.

“It’s way too early to predict what kind of cable needs will be out there
until we do more homework,” Garrison said. “Though we’ll not necessarily
have to reinvent cable and laser-optic devices from the ground up, we’re
hoping to leverage the installed base if we can.”

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.