10 Gigabit Ethernet in the Marketplace
Fancy Wang
Helping Global Enterprises Optimize Network Performance | Ethernet Card & Switch Solutions
Fancy Wang 0424 2020
The following part of the information comes from Intel's official and online information
Know When It's Time to Replace Enterprise Network Equipment
Market Innovation
The relative stability of a product is key for determining the useful life of most products. Markets that are increasingly standardized or have progressed further down the commoditization curve provide the impetus to increase or stabilize the useful life of products. Products with a smaller percentage of software or stable software features are also good candidates for extended life. Market innovations do not necessarily require or force an upgrade.
For example, there is no need to upgrade a workgroup LAN to 10GbE. However, a requirement for Power Over Ethernet (PoE or PoE +) for items like security cameras or some high-end WLAN access points (APs) may force a technology upgrade. Other new requirements — such as broad deployments of network access control or WOCs — may be better handled by overlays, while enabling the switch and router installation to remain in place to extend their useful lives.
Other parts of the network, such as network security and ADCs, have more innovation and critical demands for new capabilities. For example, the migration of 2048-bit or 4096-bit SSL keys has necessitated a move toward ADCs with higher overall performance. Vendor EOL Policies Vendor EOL announcements trigger a series of events that lead to the end of support for a product. Although the lack of a support contract is an issue for network operations, it does not result in a mandatory requirement to replace the equipment.
In some circumstances, it is perfectly fine to get support from a third-party vendor. It is important to understand what an EOS announcement means. Although it impacts and influences useful life of a product, it doesn't have to dictate it. In the case of Cisco, an EOS announcement causes a specific chain of events. The final date that Cisco will accept orders for new networking equipment is approximately six months after an EOS announcement. Starting with this EOS date, Cisco will provide full software and hardware support.
for the product for a total of five years, presented as three years for software and five years for hardware.
Software support generally means that bugs will be fixed and security vulnerabilities will be closed. There may be some feature upgrades (especially if the product is part of a family where active developments are still being performed).
After the third year, Cisco will only provide hardware support (basically replacement for failed components). Juniper Networks and HP support plans are similar to Cisco; however, Juniper is now offering five years of software support (though not necessarily for the current version of Junos).
This can be a competitive differentiator, especially for products that are Internet-facing and require security patches to lower risk. Most other vendors have some variations on these five-year, EOS support options. Some workgroup switches will include some form of lifetime warranty for the hardware, but may exclude power supplies and fans in other cases. Enterprises need to carefully understand the fine print on what is covered on these often-limited lifetime warranties.
A final vendor issue in determining the useful life of a product may come down to luck and careful buying. Buying a product near the end of its time in a product portfolio can reduce its useful life in the network. Although organizations should be aware of where a product fits in a vendor's life cycle, it's not always easy to predict when a vendor will update its product portfolio.
Ethernet technology is currently the most deployed technology for high-performance LAN environments. Enterprises around the world have invested cabling, equipment, processes, and training in Ethernet.
In addition, the ubiquity of Ethernet keeps its costs low, and with each deployment of next-generation Ethernet technology, deployment costs have trended downward. In networks today, the increase in worldwide network traffic is driving service providers, enterprise network managers and architects to look to faster network technologies to solve increased bandwidth demands. 10 Gigabit Ethernet has ten times the performance over Gigabit Ethernet today. With the addition of 10 Gigabit Ethernet to the Ethernet technology family, a LAN now can reach further distances and support even more bandwidthhungry applications.
10 Gigabit Ethernet also meets several criteria for efficient and effective high-speed network performance, which makes it a natural choice for expanding, extending, and upgrading existing Ethernet networks:
■ A customer’s existing Ethernet infrastructure is easily interoperable with 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The new technology provides lower cost of ownership including both acquisition and support costs versus current alternative technologies.
■ Using processes, protocols, and management tools already deployed in the management infrastructure, 10 Gigabit Ethernet draws on familiar management tools and a common skills base.
■ Flexibility in network design with server, switch, and router connections.
■ Multiple vendor sourcing of standards-based products provides proven interoperability. As 10 Gigabit Ethernet enters the market and equipment vendors deliver 10 Gigabit Ethernet network devices, the next step for enterprise and service provider networks is the combination of multi-gigabit bandwidth with intelligent services, which leads to scaled, intelligent, multi-gigabit networks with backbone and server connections ranging up to 10 Gbps.
Convergence of voice and data networks running over Ethernet becomes a very real option. And, as TCP/IP incorporates enhanced services and features, such as packetized voice and video, the underlying Ethernet can also carry these services without modification. The 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard not only increases the speed of Ethernet to 10 Gbps, but also extends its interconnectivity and its operating distance up to 40 km. Like Gigabit Ethernet, the 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard (IEEE 802.3ae*) supports both singlemode and multimode fiber mediums.
However, in 10 Gigabit, the distance for single-mode (SM) fiber has expanded from 5 km in Gigabit Ethernet to 40 km in 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The advantage of reaching new distances gives companies who manage their own LAN environments the option to extend their data center to a more cost-effective location up to 40 km away from their campuses. This also allows them to support multiple campus locations within the 40 km distance.
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As we have seen with previous versions of Ethernet, the cost for 10 Gbps communications has the potential to drop significantly with the development of 10 Gigabit Ethernet-based technologies. Compared to 10 Gbps telecommunications lasers, the 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology, as defined in the IEEE 802.3ae*, will be capable of using lower cost, non-cooled optics, and vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSEL), which can lower PMD device costs. In addition, an aggressive merchant chip market that provides highly integrated silicon solutions supports the industry. Applications for 10 Gigabit Ethernet Vendors and users generally agree that Ethernet is inexpensive, well understood, widely deployed and backwards compatible in today’s LAN networks.
Today, a packet can leave a server on a short-haul optic Gigabit Ethernet port, move cross-country via a DWDM (dense-wave division multiplexing) network, and find its way down to a PC attached to a Gigabit copper port, all without any re-framing or protocol conversion.
Ethernet is literally everywhere, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet maintains this seamless migration in functionality for any application in which Ethernet can be applied. 10 Gigabit Ethernet as a Fabric Interconnect Fabric interconnects, whether they are for server area networks or storage area networks, have traditionally been the domain of dedicated, often proprietary, networks with relatively small user bases when compared to Ethernet. These server area networks include InfiniBand*, Servernet*, Myranet*, Wulfkit* and Quadrics* technologies, and offer excellent bandwidth and latency performance for very short-haul (generally less than 20 m) networks.
However, with the exception of InfiniBand, these are proprietary networks that can be difficult to deploy and maintain due to the small number of experienced IT professionals familiar with the technology. The small volumes also result in higher costs for server adapters and switches. And, as with any proprietary solution, they are not interoperable with other technologies without the appropriate routers and switches.
In storage area networks, the lack of standards and a slew of interoperability problems plagued the early Fibre Channel deployments. However, these technologies also suffer similar problems as those seen by proprietary server area networks in that they are considered difficult to deploy due to lack of a skilled IT pool, are relatively expensive at the adapter and switch port, are still not directly interoperable with other network technologies without expensive routers or switching devices, and generally focus on short-haul deployments.
10 Gigabit Ethernet is in a position to replace these proprietary technologies as a next-generation interconnect for both server and storage-area networks for several reasons:
■ 10 Gigabit Ethernet Offers the Necessary Bandwidth. In fact, InfiniBand and Fibre Channel will also begin mass deployments of 10 Gigabit technologies, indicating a convergence on 10 Gigabit throughput.
■ Cost-Saving Server Consolidation. 10 Gigabit Ethernet grants a single server the bandwidth needed to replace several servers that were doing different jobs. Centralization of management is also a major benefit of server consolidation. With a single powerful server, IT managers can monitor, manage, and tune servers and application resources from a single console, which saves time and maximizes IT resources. According to IDC, companies realize a seven-to-one savings in management when processes and servers are consolidated.? ? IDC, Worldwide Server Consolidation Forecast, September 2002
■ Planned Growth of 10 Gigabit Network Features. For the first time ever, Ethernet can be a low-latency network due to RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) support, which is critical in the server-to-server communication typically associated with clustering and server area networks.
In addition, the expected universal deployment of TOE (TCP/IP Offload Engine) technology in 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapters may make it extremely efficient on host systems with expected CPU utilization well below anything seen on today’s systems deploying Gigabit Ethernet. Due to the wide adoption rate of Ethernet, TOE technology will become extremely cost efficient compared to the lower volume, niche alternatives. 10 Gigabit Ethernet in Local Area Networks Ethernet technology is already the most deployed technology for high-performance LAN environments.
With the extension of 10 Gigabit Ethernet into the family of Ethernet technologies, LANs can provide better support the rising number of bandwidthhungry applications and reach greater distances. Similar to Gigabit Ethernet technology, the 10 Gigabit standard supports both single-mode and multimode fiber media.
With links up to 40 km, 10 Gigabit Ethernet allows companies that manage their own LAN environments the ability to strategically choose the location of their data center and server farms – up to 40 km away from their campuses.
This enables them to support multiple campus locations within that 40 km range (Figure 2). Within data centers, switch-to-switch.applications, as well as switch-to-server applications, can be deployed over a more cost-effective, short-haul, multi-mode fiber medium to create 10 Gigabit Ethernet backbones that support the continuous growth of bandwidth-hungry applications.
With 10 Gigabit backbones, companies can easily support Gigabit Ethernet connectivity in workstations and desktops with reduced network congestion, enabling greater implementation of bandwidth-intensive applications, such as streaming video, medical imaging, centralized applications, and high-end graphics. 10 Gigabit Ethernet also improves network latency, due to the speed of the link and over-provisioning bandwidth, to compensate for the bursty nature of data in enterprise applications.
The bandwidth that 10 Gigabit backbones provide also enables the next generation of network applications. It can help make telemedicine, telecommuting, distance learning and interactive, digital videoconferencing everyday realities instead of remote future possibilities. And the fun stuff too, like HDTV, videoon-demand, or extreme Internet gaming. 10 Gigabit Ethernet enables enterprises to reduce network congestion, increase use of bandwidth-intensive applications, and make more strategic decisions about the location of their key networking assets by extending their LAN up to 40 km. 10 Gigabit Ethernet in Metropolitan and Storage Applications Gigabit Ethernet is already being deployed as a backbone technology for dark fiber metropolitan networks.
With appropriate 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, optical transceivers and singlemode fiber, network and Internet service providers will be able to build links reaching 40 km or more (Figure 3), encircling metropolitan areas with city-wide networks. 10 Gigabit Ethernet now enables cost-effective, high-speed infrastructure for both network attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SAN).
Prior to the introduction of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, some industry observers maintained that Ethernet lacked sufficient horsepower to get the job done. 10 Gigabit Ethernet can now offer equivalent or superior data carrying capacity at latencies similar to many other storage networking technologies, including Fiber Channel, Ultra160 or 320 SCSI, ATM OC-3, OC-12, and OC-192, and HIPPI (HighPerformance Parallel Interface). Gigabit Ethernet storage servers, tape libraries, and compute servers are already available; 10 Gigabit Ethernet end-point devices will soon appear on the market as well.
There are numerous applications for Gigabit Ethernet today, such as back-up and database mining. Some of the applications that will take advantage of 10 Gigabit Ethernet are:
■ Business continuance/disaster recovery
■ Remote back-up
■ Storage on demand
■ Streaming media 10 Gigabit Ethernet in Wide Area Networks 10 Gigabit Ethernet enables ISPs and NSPs to create very highspeed links at a very low cost from co-located, carrier-class switches and routers to the optical equipment directly attached to the SONET/SDH cloud. 10 Gigabit Ethernet, with the WAN PHY, also allows the construction of WANs that connect geographically dispersed LANs between campuses or points of presence (POPs) over existing SONET/SDH/TDM networks. 10 Gigabit Ethernet links between a service provider’s switch and a DWDM device or LTE (line termination equipment) might in fact be very short – less than 300 meters.