Crumbs
Rich T finds some tasty titbits you might have missed in the week's news
Wednesday 13 December 2006, 5:35 PM
A need for speed
So 100Gbps ethernet is on the way. Well, kind of.
With international standards body the IEEE starting development of the proposed technology, it can only be good news, but anyone who thinks they'll see such ethernet speeds this decade is much mistaken.
But let's just get a grip for a moment. 10Gbps (over copper) is here. It's not deployed much, and it's been one huge headache to develop: the frequency needed to get 10Gbps down a twisted copper pair at 100metres is high enough to cause havoc (the problem is called alien crosstalk, if you're wondering - a problem caused by cables lying next to each other in risers interfering with each other).
Don't get me wrong, 100Gbps will get here, but it will be one bumpy ride. It'll hit the carrier domain first, but it might creep into the largest corporate datacentres (on fibre or copper) early next decade.
Don't hold your breath on 100Gbps to the desktop, though.
PreviousComments on this post
When I was a mere slip of a lad doing microwave RF engineering (he said, drawing his tartan rug up over his bath chair), 10 Gbps was the sort of thing that needed millimetre precision over about two inches of circuit board. The thought of stuffing it down a couple of metres of extremely expensive coax was hairy enough, let alone entrusting it to tens of metres of ordinary twisty copper.
In other words, what is proposed is against God and against Nature, and may James Clerk Maxwell have mercy on your soul.
