New Ethernet Standard — Both 40 and 100 Gbps

Artemis recommends a blog entry that does a nice job of summarizing the history and current state of the Higher Speed Study Group and the IEEE's next-generation Ethernet standard. "When IEEE 802.3ba was originally proposed [there] were multiple possible speeds that were being discussed, including 40, 80, 100, and 120Gbps. While there options were eventually narrowed down to just two, 40 and 100Gbps, the HSSG had difficulties [deciding] on the one specific speed they wanted to become the new standard... [T]wo different groups formed, one which wanted faster server-to-switch connections at 40Gbps and one which wanted a more robust network backbone at 100Gbps... Unable to come up with a consensus the HSSG decided to standardize both 40Gbps and 100Gbps speeds..."

Cable Length

[fishybell]

Interesting to see that the faster 100Gbps also has the longer cable lengths built into the standard. From TFA:

40Gbps can be 1 meter long on the backplane, 10 meters for copper cable and 100 meters for fiber-optics. The 100Gbps standard includes specifications for 10 kilometer and 40 kilometer connections over single-mode fiber.

I'm seeing the 100Gbps used for infrastructure with its larger bandwidth and longer cable length while the 40Gbps would be used for datacenters, server rooms, etc. with its faster "connect" speeds (clarification on what exactly this would mean?).

Ars Technica?

[conigs]

I'm normally not one to do this, but the article linked is nearly identical to the coverage over at Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]. It seems that only a few words were changed and without even a link to the original ars article.

nice increase

[poetmatt]

Considering that this stuff was doing 10 GB in 2005, to see 100 in 2007 is a pretty nice upgrade...my question is, given that the speeds are increasing, will we see any of this as consumers in the US? Not a "providers suck" (which we already know), but more of a "will this potentially make connections cheaper"?

Re:speed vs. robustness?

[Doctor Memory]

I wonder if it has something to do with latency. Maybe the 40Gb connections are faster because they have a simpler routing protocol or they use smaller packet sizes with no CRC. I haven't been able to get through to the actual proposed spec yet, so it's hard to say...

Re:nice increase

[Martin Blank]

Those of us in security are dreading this. IDS/IPS companies are only now dealing efficiently with multi-gigabit solutions for a reasonable price, and no one that I have talked to will do line-speed 10Gbs processing (some boxes can use parallel processing to handle streams from multiple inputs going up to 10Gbps, but not from a single line through a single processor to ensure that attack streams are properly reviewed). I shudder to think of what a 40Gbps stream will be like to monitor.