The end of Gigabit Ethernet

The brave new world

In the past few decades, we have seen what appeared to be an unstoppable, exponential growth in networking speeds: 10 Mbit Ethernet, 100 Mbit Ethernet, and now 1000 Mbit (Gigabit) Ethernet being commonplace and very affordable. Every time we finally had brought all our computers and networking equipment up to speed within our limited budget, that very same speed was already available ten-fold, and the whole budgeting and implementation exercise started all over again.

But what lies still ahead, how soon can we really expect it in the office and in the home, and above all: how much more can we really squeeze out of those cheap eight strands of twisted copper wire that we know as UTP network cable?

Whereas the average home or SMB computer user has the impression that after those three successive – and successful – generations of network speeds, transported over the ubiquitous UTP cable, technological advances seem to have halted, the corporate geek has already long gotten his hands on gear that is way cooler – and way more expensive.

The snag in the cable

Because of the inherent limitations of thin copper wire as a data transport - it gets increasingly difficult to keep raising the frequencies without unacceptable packet loss due to cross-talk, skin effect, inter-symbol interference and other unwanted effects straight from Electromagnetism 101 – vendors did not sit out this decade for new technological leaps to make the next generation – 10 Gigabit Ethernet – commercially viable over copper UTP cable. Instead, they have focused just a portion of their R&D on ever more integrated silicon chips that made the now current generation of Gigabit Ethernet dirt cheap, but the bulk of their efforts – and returns on that investment – was localized elsewhere: the enterprise market.

For quite a number of years, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) has already been commonplace in the corporate world. The average computer user was left completely unaware of this wonderful new generation passing him by, whereas the techies could play with cutting edge, interference free, and very expensive network cards and even more expensive switches and routers. The reason for this discrepancy is one thing, and one thing only: the cost of fiber. Necessary for those high speeds at that time, combined with the almost niche market of corporate networking where dropped packets and high latency are unacceptable, prices of that class of network gear are worthwhile if your business really depends on it. Where the speed of light is only fast enough, the premium price doesn’t matter.

The unexpected alternative

There is a middle ground however, and that comes with InfiniBand, also known as CX4. For short distances of a few meters between racks in a data center, one can use InfiniBand copper cable in dual-rate or quad-rate: essentially the same thick cable used for bundling multi-lane SATA cables to a RAID controller in a storage array. With prices of simple switches initially ranging in the tens of thousands of dollars, this gear was only reserved for companies with a very large IT budget, and also seemed to get deprecated. With IT budgets shrinking and fiber remaining expensive, this somewhat bulky short-distance technology is however becoming the preferred standard for very local networks such as a Storage Area Network (SAN) or a High Performance Computing (HPC) grid in a server room.

Copper at last

Since mid-2008, network interface cards for 10GbE over cheap copper UTP – albeit the “newer” Cat. 6, 6a or 7 variety – are finally commercially available, but at a cost that is still highly prohibitive for the home or SMB user. At $1000 minimum per NIC - and much more for the accompanying network switch - these goodies aren’t even marketed to that audience. As usual, this cutting edge technology costs a bundle for a few years after its market introduction, only to drop slowly in price once the previous generation is deemed insufficient for daily use, and then necessary adoption fuels mass production and a sharper price drop. Then, existing cheap and thin cabling can be used for those same 100 meters (about 300 feet) maximum lengths we all love in our homes and offices: it’s simply a matter of swapping out network cards and switches, just like we did on the three previous occasions.

The odd duck

Meanwhile at the other side of the corporate fence, manufacturers have been busy promoting 40 Gigabit Ethernet to their bandwidth-hungry customers. But that strange “mid-generation” speed should not be expected to be transported over even the newest type of UTP cable over distances longer than 10 meters, if ever. Instead, fiber in its single-mode (expensive long distance) or multi-mode (cheap short distance) variety is used, just like 10GbE usually still is.

Some manufacturers first pushed for a funky multiplexing method to mix four 10GbE channels on one fiber, but now the official IEEE standard is predominant. Strangely enough for the average observer, this generation is already on the brink of being eclipsed by something far better that the very same Internet Task Forcechurned out: 100 Gigabit Ethernet. That’s right: a hundred times faster than that very fast network you’ve just completed rolling out at the office.

As we say goodbye to 2009, we might as well start thinking about saying goodbye to Gigabit Ethernet, although for some happy few that might happen a lot sooner than for most of us. Granted, mind-boggling network speeds will not be economical for home or SOHO use for quite some time, but the future is already here. Just a week ago, Juniper, along with other vendors, demonstrated a working long-haul 100 Gbps link, intended for roll-out later in 2010 in large educational and scientific installations such as Internet2 and the Large Hadron Collider.

The bandwidth gap

From then on, it’s only waiting for those speeds to trickle down to our own computing environment. Whether mainstream broadband providers will pick up the pace as well, remains to be seen. Right now, most of us have an internal network that is literally a hundred times faster than our connection to the outside world. If ISPs work as “diligently” on bandwidth upgrades as they are currently working on the increasingly urgent IPv6 implementation, that gap will only grow dramatically, some even think disastrously.

And that’s not all. Believe it or not, but the IEEE plans on having yet another standard in place by 2014. In just four short years, the final standard will be officialized of… Terabit Ethernet. That’s right, a thousand Gigabits, or one full million Megabits of information rushing through a cable per second. With manufacturers always willing to leap ahead of the competition and offering draft-standard products before the final standard is in place, expect your friendly corporation around the corner using a network a thousand times faster than the one you’re possibly still using at that time.

The bandwidth gapwill not only increase between corporations and SMB or home users, vast regional differences will also become more prominent. A small but densely populated market like Belgium for instance – which houses NATO headquarters and the European Parliament in its Brussels capital – has an array of telcos still offering ridiculously low corporate fiber speeds at astronomical prices – installation costs up to 100 EUR/meter for the last mile plus 1000 EUR/month for 2 Mbit/s – whereas the neighbouring Netherlands already provide freely installed 100 Mbit Fiber To The Home (FTTH) in new homes at the same price you used to pay for 4 Mbit consumer cable access. But that’s not just typical for Europe and its surprisingly fragmented/neglected markets where EMEA seems like a myth in telco-land: the very same growing gap will inevitable occur between for instance Manhattan and the Midwest. And we’re not even talking about differences between continents.

The end of Gigabit Ethernet as the dominant network standard is near. How near exactly, will strongly depend on where you’re sitting and surfing.

Pete Stevens

About the author

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Tagged with: ethernet • gigabit • switch

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