There’s a debate going on right now over some issues having to do with the 40 gigabyte and 100 gigabyte issues in IP networks. Shedding light on some of the crucial issues, Shawn Morris, a senior IP engineering consultant with NTT America (News - Alert), recently spoke to TMC on a podcast.
“We were involved with the IEEE (News - Alert) high-speed study group that was formed in 2006,” Morris said, “as a precursor to the 40 gigabyte and 100 gigabyte Ethernet proposals,” adding that NTT America was not in favor of the 40 gigabyte Ethernet standard.
“We felt it didn’t deliver a significant enough increase in bandwidth over a 10 gigabyte Ethernet, and that it would delay the release of 100 gigabyte Ethernet.” He noted that “we have not seen a significant uptake in OC-768 in either the infrastructure or customer termination side.”
In fact, Morris said, he and his company feel it’s entirely possible that 40 gigabyte Ethernet may follow the same path. “We feel the area between 10 and 100 gigabytes can be adequately handled with link aggregation and network infrastructure.”
And 40-gigabyte Ethernet, he explained, most likely will have a role in the data center, for a server connection and layer 2 aggregation. “But for now, we’re not sure how prevalent it will be in IP transit networks.
He conceded that 40 gigabyte Ethernet is going to have “one big advantage initially,” and that is in optics price. “From what we hear, 40 gigabyte pricing is going to be fairly linear from 10 gigabyte,” he said, “while 100 gigabyte Ethernet is going to be significantly higher.
Torrieri also asked why, at the end of 2009, did the need to do so become so urgent, in light of the still-existent economic downturn?
“In a word, bandwidth,” Morris told her. “We’re seeing the bandwidth consumed by Internet retailers, CDNs and social networks continue to climb. With the increasing prevalence of Internet video, especially HD video, and the migration of corporate networks from private line service to VPNs -- both layer 2 and layer 3 -- the bandwidth needs are climbing as fast as they ever have.”
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Marisa Torrieri