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100 Gbps Via Ethernet 160

Posted by kdawson from the don't-bother-torrenting dept.
Doc Ruby writes, "As reported at GigaOM, 'Infinera has bonded 10 parallel 10 Gb/s channels into one logical flow while maintaining packet ordering at the receiver,' bridging 100-Gbps ethernet over 10 10-Gbps optical WAN links. Infinera's press release is here. Further from GigaOM: 'The experimental system was set up between Tampa, Florida and Houston, Texas, and back again. A 100 GbE signal was spliced into ten 10 Gb/s streams using an Infinera-proposed specification for 100GbE across multiple links. The splicing of the signal is based on a packet-reordering algorithm developed at [UC] Santa Cruz. This algorithm preserves packet order even as individual flows are striped across multiple wavelengths.' We're all going to want our share of these 100Gbps networks. The current network retailers, mainly cable and DSL dealers, still haven't brought even 10Mbps to most homes, though they're now bringing fiber to the premises to some rich/lucky customers. Are they laying fiber that will bring them to Tbps, or will that stuff clog the way to getting these speeds ourselves?" Rumors say that what runs over Verizon's FiOS is ATM, to support their aspirations for triple-play.
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100 Gbps Via Ethernet More

100 Gbps Via Ethernet

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  • 100 GBPS (Score:5, Funny)

    by Intron ( 870560 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @02:48PM (#16842480)
    Why should I have to wait 5 seconds to download a movie. Don't they have anything faster?

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yeh, "rich" isn't a requirement. It's cheaper than Cable around here, and not only "rich" neighborhoods have it. In fact, if you look at some of the places in my state you'd be surprised. Richer areas have no word on when they're getting it, but some rundown areas got it a while ago (both city and in the boonies).

    • Re:Rich? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jim_Maryland ( 718224 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @03:06PM (#16842796)
      Recently switched to FIOS myself and I'm saving compared to my Comcast bill.

      $117 Comcast (Digital Cable without any of the premium channels, broadband at 7 Mbps (although never actually saw rates near that))
      $69 Verizon FIOS (Digital TV without any of the premium channels, broadband at 5 Mbps (actually saw rates exceeding that but generally very close to the advertised speed))

      Since Verizon FIOS was available in the area (Maryland), Comcast has been pretty heavily advertising their bundle for new customers where you get the Digital Cable ($33), VoIP ($33), and Broadband ($33). Unfortunately that appears to be a one year deal compared to Verizon FIOS which doesn't appear to have plans to jump up after the initial year (hopefully I didn't miss some small print).

      FYI - Using SunRocket [sunrocket.com] as my VoIP with the monthly cost under $17 so the Comcast package isn't an option for me.
      • I so desperately want to switch to FIOS, or anything besides Cablevision, but it doesn't look like I have any options in my area (Brooklyn). Verizon says no to DSL even, which I find odd, but I can't imagine FIOS is anywhere close to being rolled out if DSL isn't even available.

        *sigh*
        • I was eager to get off of my local cable provider too. I'm hopeful this competition will drive the prices down (which I can somewhat see with the package Comcast is offering).

          I only recently checked to see if DSL was an option in my area and apparently DSL isn't available. Now maybe Verizon disqualified the DSL check based on the fact that I already have FiOS but even checking a neighbors address indicates that DSL isn't available. I don't know if I'd rule out FiOS just on the basis that DSL isn't ava
      • As much as I'd like FiOS, from looking at Verizon's Maryland FiOS page [verizon.com], Verizon isn't rolling out Fibre until the county has granted them a franchise to do TV over FiOS

        The most recent article [verizon.com] discusses the fact that Verizon sued "Montgomery County asking the court to require the county to negotiate a lawful franchise with the company. Verizon and Montgomery County have agreed to stay Verizon's lawsuit until the county council votes on the agreement. If the agreement is approved, the case will be dismissed

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by ScentCone ( 795499 )
          So, while I don't know if Verizon is bundling the service to consumers, Verizon is certainly bundling the services to the Counties, since Verizon already has whatever permissions it needs for internet and voice services.

          My Mom (in Montgomery County) has FIOS up to her house for data. It's fast. She's using Comcast for cable TV. She called Verizon about switching over to them for 'cable' service so she could bundle that, and her copper land line all together. They said "Sure! we'll have someone out to tal
          • Earlier in the year when we had inquired about FiOS, we had the same issue. We could get the broadband but we'd have to use DirecTV for our TV service. We just waited it out until all services were available. We did however contact Comcast and ask them to compete on price before we even made the switch. Comcast did lower our rates on the Internet service but they wouldn't budge on the TV side of the bill. Still, we managed to cut the bill by about $15 until we completely dumped Comcast.
        • I'm in Howard County so this article [verizon.com] covers the TV offering:

          Howard County approved Verizon's franchise agreement on Jan. 3. The company expects to begin selling FiOS TV in the county by the end of April

          I held off switching until I could do a complete switch over to FiOS. I think the package offering from Verizon FiOS only applied to savings with the VoIP offering (might have been a $5-10 difference) but as I stated above, I already have SunRocket and it is costing a lot less than Vonage, Comcast, or
      • "Verizon FIOS which doesn't appear to have plans to jump up after the initial year "

        I have some experience dealing with AT&T ^W New England Telephone ^W^W^W NYNEX ^W Bell Atlantic ^W^W Verizon. I can say with assurance that there *is* a plan to increase the rates. You just may not be aware of it yet.

        "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further."

        Darth Vader doesn't have a thing on The Phone Company.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by PPH ( 736903 )
      If its Verizon territory, 'rich' means nothing. Poor might be an advantage.


      Verizon recently replaced their old twisted copper cables when my city (Kirkland WA, multi-million dollar waterfront homes, within spitting distance of Bill Gates' house, etc.) widened a road that runs near one of their CO buildings. They replaced it with........more twisted copper.

      • When it comes to deploying infrastructure, poor areas make the telcos more money.

        Why? Higher housing density. More people in one place means you can serve more customers with the same amount of cable and equipment.

        Since rich folks pay the same as poor for the same internet access, telcos would rather deploy to higher density poor neighborhoods first.

        Of course this doesn't apply to high density rich neighborhoods like much of Manhattan, but in suburbia it definitely does.

        -Z

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Ponga ( 934481 )
          Rich... poor. Pfft. Does not make a difference if your new fiber going in is subsidized. My grandmother lives in a small community (30K pop.) in BFE Eastern Arizona. The neighborhood is lower-middle class, but all the streets are tore up due to a company installing fiber to the home. Rumor has it that the Latter Day Saints (this is a big Mormon town) are footing a good portion of the bill. Either way, this is the only place I have ever seen fiber being laid to the home, city or not, rich part of town or not

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by zeath ( 624023 )
          Wouldn't a poor area have a lower adoption rate though? It wouldn't make sense to build infrastructure to a community of 10,000 people where only 1% can afford your service, when you can instead rollout to a community of 1,000 with a 20% signup rate.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by GiMP ( 10923 )
            I suspect (since I have no references to cite) that the "poor" often are in their situation due to bad money management. This means that they're more likely to spend their money on "luxury" items. For families with children, on the other hand, it may not be a bad investment for them, the children of such families will obtain a great benefit from the opportunities that such connectivity will provide them. Most parents wouldn't mind struggling a bit financially if it means that their children will have an

            • I suspect (since I have no references to cite) that the "poor" often are in their situation due to bad money management.

              The "poor" are that way for a variety of reasons, not just the one you stated. Living one paycheck away from being on the street changes your financial options. I would have been on the street if not for credit cards, which I used to pay bills until I could find another job. I'm still dirt poor because I'm working on paying them back (and then I have student loans coming up when I gradu

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by GiMP ( 10923 )
                > The "poor" are that way for a variety of reasons, not just the one
                > you stated.

                Clearly, that is why I said, "often".

                > "I would have been on the street if not for credit cards, which I
                > used to pay bills until I could find another job."

                This could be considered as bad money management. Although I understand that extenuating circumstances may have led to this path.

                > I have student loans coming up when I graduate this spring

                So you're a poor college student? Well, thats a completely different

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mibus ( 26291 )
            Not necessarily. The theory I heard is that it's more than balanced out, because in the more affluent areas people can afford to go out more often (eg. theatre, cinema, opera, parties, overseas holidays) whereas the mid-lower end of the scale gets more hours of usefulness out of pay-tv.

  • Whoa (Score:1, Funny)

    by JRWR ( 1001828 )
    Holy Cow, thats alot of data at once, i dont even think my HD can keep up with that, tho playing couter strike will be fun with -90ms lag

    • Re: not so whoa (Score:2, Insightful)

      by indigoid ( 3724 )
      Increasing the bandwidth beyond a surprisingly small figure does not (automatically) improve noticeably the RTT. This is clearly demonstrated in one of the utterly wonderful Stevens books, though I forget which. Most likely one of the three TCP/IP Illustrated volumes.

      Ultimately the limiting factors are (a) the transceivers terminating each segment, (b) software, and (c) the speed of light. It sounds like these guys have put their work into (b).
      • Actually it would decrease pings to quite a degree.
        First off this is FAST so the equipment being used is good quality.
        Second if a program wants a packet sent it doesnt need to wait as long for the packets ahead of it in the queue to be sent.

        This message was posted over a network with 0.117 ms lag. :)
    • -90ms hey? They have precognitive online gaming algorithms now?

  • Bad idea for the home network... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @02:58PM (#16842624)
    Couldn't they come up with a single 100Gb cable specification? The last thing I need is ten cables running from each computer into a monster hub. I shouldn't be turning my home into a cable closet! :P

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by QuantumRiff ( 120817 )
      It is one cable. They split the signal out to the single fiber cable using different wavelenghts. (ie, colors) and run 10 wavelengths over the same cable, at 10Gbs each. For simplicity sake, picture it as 10Gb/s with a red laser, 10Gb/s with a Blue laser, 10Gb/s with a green one... and so on.

  • Heh like this will ever see homes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Durrok ( 912509 ) <calltechsucks&gmail,com> on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @02:59PM (#16842648) Homepage Journal
    Hell, why give us even 10MB w/o paying out the arse for it when you have people paying $40/month just for 3MB/512K?

    If anything like this ever came out it would probably be shared (obviously) and beyond the standard monthly fee there would be a per MB charge as well.
    God I hate USA's internet :|

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by aetherworld ( 970863 )
      God I hate USA's internet :|


      Hrhr, that was fun :D

      I'm paying 65 euro (=83US$) a month for 2mbit/512kbit ADSL. And that's with 15GB/month download limit (although fair use, which means they turn it off at 50gb). And that's the cheapest option. And btw, I live in a city -.-

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Durrok ( 912509 )
        Wow you are getting raped over there. Where in Europe is this?
        • Austria...

          and raped is the correct word -.-

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by duguk ( 589689 )
          That sounds pretty similar to UK prices. Around £25/mo for 50gb limit/mo. Thats €35 or $50 for around 2mbps with a limit. Oh, plus £10 or $20/15 for phone line from BT.

          Unfair, no? Its almost impossible to get unlimited connection - its at least twice that for the same speeds, plus the phone line from BT.

          DugUK

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sponga ( 739683 )
      Thank god there are more activities in the U.S. to do than be on the internet. Seriously wasn't the major argument about 'USA behind in Broadband' that because of the colder places people lived in the other places in the world so they occupied their times in-door on the internet.

      Now I live in Southern California with a huge population and luckily moved my family to a more upscale neighborhood luckily; we are on of the few small communities to get FIOS but I just do not see anybody praising it around here at
      • Thank god there are more activities in the U.S. to do than be on the internet.

        Yeah ... like eat.

        Somehow I think that if we just had so many other things to do, to the point where people just don't care about internet access, because they're just so darned happy to be outside playing softball and everything else, that we wouldn't be one of the most morbidly obese countries on the planet.

        I've got another theory: the demand for Internet doesn't exist in the U.S. to the same extent it does in other countries, b
    • I pay $80 per month, for 10mbit (down)/ 768 up DSL and Phone (w/ long distance) using Surewest (www.surewest.net) in Roseville, CA. When I am downloading from Fileshack, I have seen 12mbit speeds.
      • My business class DSL with Verizon in Pennsylvania is 1.5Mbit down, 368Kbit up and I'm paying around $140/mo.

        But that's a completely unfiltered connection, static IP, no caps, priority support, no hassles about how much bandwidth I use. Which is good, because I'm a digital packrat and I always have something downloading in the background.

  • GigE (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bhima ( 46039 ) <Bhima...Pandava@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @02:59PM (#16842650) Journal
    I'd be happy with something between GigE and 10GigE... seems like they do all of this wonderful shit for the top tiers while the rest of the world gets by with 'fast Ethernet' or GigE at best.

    Worse the prices beyond GigE are nothing short of heart stopping.
    • its rather simple.... the guys with the need for 10GigE and faster have the deep pockets. Follow the money
    • The prices of 10GigE switches were outrageous just a year ago, but they've fallen quite a bit as cheap chinese and indian switch makers are getting their production lines cranked up.

      I'm seeing about 200 euros per port for a 24 port 10GigE switch, much less for a switch with a few 10GigE ports and 24 10/100/1000 ports.

      Give it another year for 10GigE. Where the price savings are now starting to happen is with the real, working 1GigE switches with jumbo packet support, flow control, and non-blocking switching

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bhima ( 46039 )
        I've seen those. What I'd like is some thing to roll out at my 2nd gig. 20 workstations 7 servers and a network that most people would like to be a little faster than 1GigE we use now... but no one is crazy enough to want 10GigE.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Cecil ( 37810 )
          Do you have a good network topology? Because that's a lot more important than throwing more bandwidth at it.

          Besides if you have a good network topology you should be able to upgrade only the core switches and possibly servers to 10Gig, alleviating your bottleneck without needing to upgrade everything.
        • Aye, consider your network topology.

          For servers, you should look at NIC bonding where you use 2+ cables between the server and the switch. Dual-NIC Intel cards are only $170 or so and there are even quad-NIC cards (or you could just install two dual-NIC cards). That will give you 2-4 gigabits per server of bandwidth to share among the workstations.

          You may even want to consider NIC bonding for the workstations, but that will require extra wire runs. Or maybe you get an inexpensive 16 port switch (~$24
  • ... I was happy just to discover I could connect my computers via the electric mains using Homeplugs.

  • TCP-PR = neat stuff (Score:4, Informative)

    by neuro.slug ( 628600 ) <neuro__&hotmail,com> on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @03:09PM (#16842844)
    Here's a link to the paper (PDF) [ucsc.edu] on the packet reordering if you're interested. Being a former banana slug, I was very interested to see this research coming out of UCSC. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy whenever something theory-based is actually implemented.
    • Thanks; I've only taken a cursory look at this, but I see where TCP-PR may be applied to Disruption Tolerant Networks.
    • Hey Neuro, when'd you graduate? Crown '84 here.

      [note to mods - self modded down with "no karma bonus"]
      • Crown College, 2005, BS in CS (though should have been 2003 if everything went according to plan). Thinking about going back for grad school, as I'm still living in SC.

  • Yeah. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spazntwich ( 208070 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @03:13PM (#16842900)
    Ass to mouth is probably a good guess for what runs over Verizon's FIOS pipes.

  • Certainly welcome in the data centre world (Score:5, Informative)

    by anticypher ( 48312 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [rehpycitna]> on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @03:24PM (#16843092) Homepage
    This is a natural progression of ethernet speeds. 10GigE switches are getting to the price point now that we are installing them everywhere. I even had a 10GigE switch on my home fibre for a week of testing, but slashdot just doesn't load any faster.

    All the broadband providers are moving to larger pipes now, with GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) going in everywhere, as consumers are clamoring for more than ADSL2+ speeds (24Mbps down, 2Mbps up) in city centres. I'm designing the back end of a GPON network, where every neighborhood gets 2.5Gig down, 1 Gig up, shared between 16 residences. Of course, there is going to be more than just internet on pipes that big, quadruple play to start, and as new services become available even more bandwidth will be needed. Once you start piling up the 10GigE connections, it will be nice to have a working trunk/etherchannel/bonding solution for those long hauls between data centres.

    the AC

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by D2!R2 ( 1011729 )
      Putting a 10GigE switch in your home won't do anything if your internet connection is still the same. If you want to notice a difference try copying a couple Gig folder from one computer to another one on the network.
      And since you seem to know your technical stuff with GPON, do you know if your uprate is time divisioned among the 16 channels or is it a solid 1 Gig upload per channel?
      Because I can see a lot of people setting up servers if they can get 1 Gig upload.
      • My internet connection is a fibre from my main router to my house. I convinced a supplier to lease me a section of their inter-city fibre that was lying dark, and I paid a crew to pull a fibre from the local pop to my place. I normally have a cisco 3550 on the end of the fibre, and the data centre end is a router with multiple Gig connections to various parts of the internet. I traded my local town for some right-of-way in exchange for the fibre going past the main municipal buildings, so I became the ISP f
  • '... an Infinera-proposed specification for 100GbE across multiple links...' The current network retailers, mainly cable and DSL dealers, still haven't brought even 10Mbps to most homes.

    10Gig+ on the internet is the realm of carriers and huge-volume servers. Cable companies are the customers here. Grandma? Not so much.

  • Fiber's still the wave of the future (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Manchot ( 847225 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @03:42PM (#16843442)
    Let's face it, for long-term benefit, fiber's still the way to go. Though still mostly in the research and development mode, there are companies who can make complete wavelength-division multiplexed optical systems on a chip. Some of them can send and receive 40 Gb/s on 40 different channels. Do the math. That's 1.6 Tb/s per fiber. If you have a bundle of 100 fibers, you're starting to push petabits per second. Also, keep in mind that the main limiting factor for optical data transmission rates is the electrical speed of the transistors at both ends, not the fiber itself. As transistor speeds improve, the maximum data transfer rate per channel will improve. The maximum data transmission rate of copper, on the other hand, is pretty much fixed by the fermionic nature of electrons.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by iWill ( 867290 )
      This (Infinera) is the company that makes complete wavelength-division multiplexed optical systems on a chip. They have demonstrated 40 Gbps x 40 channels = 1.6Tbps in development and currently have many 10 Gbps x 10 channel networks deployed by companies such as Level 3 (which first came online in 2004.) Also, the limiting factor in single optical channel transmission is not the transistors at each end. The real problem is the laser modulation at the transmitter as well as the response of the photdetect
  • I can guarantee that the FiOS is running over ATM. All the boxes on the houses switch each of the services into seperate ATM VCs. It's the easiest and most logical way to handle it if you want to maintain any sort of QoS guarantees between the different services.

  • Why stop there? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tringstad ( 168599 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:10PM (#16844000)
    'Infinera has bonded 10 parallel 10 Gb/s channels into one logical flow while maintaining packet ordering at the receiver,' bridging 100-Gbps ethernet over 10 10-Gbps optical WAN links.

    So what's preventing them from taking 10 of these newly created 100GbE channels, applying the same technique, and producing 1TbE?

    -Tommy

    • Well, theoretically, you could do that, but you'd be running into some pretty intense packet-reordering action at the receiver. Heck, they're probably running some pretty intense packet-reordering stuff at the receiver already. You'd probably need more/bigger/faster chips on both ends to do it.

      But if you're going for something like that, why bother trying to stack ten 10-way systems instead of just scaling this thing up to one 100-way system?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by TeknoHog ( 164938 )

      It's all about bandwidth, which is not the same thing as date rate. Unfortunately there's a huge marketroid conspiracy trying to teach us otherwise.

      Data rate (in bps) is proportional to bandwidth (in Hz). The factor between them depends on the modulation and coding schemes, which in turn are limited by the signal/noise ratio of the medium. Anyway, the system of light sources, fiber, and receivers has a certain limited bandwidth. For example, if you're using visible light from about 400 to 750 THz, you h

  • Foundry's been doing this [foundrynet.com] for a while now
  • OK, so I rented 10 compact cars from Hertz and had each one motor on up to 50 mph.
    Tomorrow I might try to get them up to 80 each for an 800 mph demonstration.
    Think I can patent this?

  • what's so special (besides the speed)? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Creepy ( 93888 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:56PM (#16844728) Journal
    The idea of packet order guarantee and ethernet are pretty much mutually exclusive, and upon further review (reading the fa), it reassembles out-of-order packets pretty much just like TCP. About the only new thing is the out-of-order disassembly and assembly and the overall speed. It still has the same flaws as Ethernet, which is that it really is only about 80-85% efficient - after that you would be better off with a Token Ring or other managed protocol (token rings are excellent for saturated networks but poor for low saturated networks).

    Sigh - and the poster seems to think ATM is a good protocol, but ATM is a terrible protocol, especially for data, but even for voice it's mediocre. It was designed for voice conversations over high noise lines with significant data loss (copper) and predominantly used over low noise high speed lines with almost no loss (fiber). Its advantage is standard packet length (53 bytes) and speed. Worst disadvantage - almost 10% overhead (5 bytes of every 53, or ~9.4%). ATM also has no guarantee of sort order or collision avoidance (since it's asynchronous) so in practices it can be really bad. Incidentally, my networking class voted this the worst protocol back in 1996, but expected it to succeed mainly because of telecoms pushing it.
  • Well, this is cool, but what does it mean? A startup in San Diego (Luxtera) is already sampling both monolithic multi channel xfp modules made entirely from silicon (minus the laser which is indium phosphate), and also makes a silicon dwdm system as well. There have been a couple of news releases lately.

    News about DWDM
    http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/in dex.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20061017005207& newsLang=en [businesswire.com]

    Darpa Grant Continues
    http://www.convergedigest.com/DWDM/DWDMarticle.as [convergedigest.com]
  • I'll just sit around lurking on Slashdot with 56k. Why can they invent 100GBps but can't even give me a 512k or 1Mbps line?

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