The ink of the 100GE standard is barely dry, and the first releases of products are only just shipping. “Phew,” thinks the large network operator, “we’re good for another few years.”
Well, among the largest, probably not. They are already faced with needing to aggregate (run in parallel) multiples of 100GE interfaces in their busiest areas. This doesn’t come cheaply, if you consider a single interface – you’re talking about a high five-figure list price minimum for interfaces (Hankins, NANOG 50), potentially more.
Fortunately, having had a little bit of a break, some enlightened folk involved in the 802.3ba standard are getting on the case again.
John D’Ambrosia, who was chair of the 802.3ba Working Group, and whose day job is in the Office of the CTO at Force 10 Networks, is in the process of kicking off a “Ethernet Wireline Bandwidth Needs” assessment activity, under the IEEE Industry Connections banner, to steer the next steps for Ethernet, so it can keep up with what the network is demanding of it.
There’s not much else online about this as yet, the effort is very much new, so I’ll add some links once there’s more information available.
This is a much needed activity, as there were some criticsms during the last iteration of the standards process about whether the faster speed was really needed, and disagreements about how big the market would be, almost conservative, while at the same time others said it would be too little, too late, at too high a price.
Good to see the new approach being taken, laying solid groundwork for the next (Terabit? Petabit? Something more creative?) run at the standard.
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