Breaking conventional wisdom: 10-Gigabit Ethernet fiber costs less than copper

For good reason, higher density, lower-cost fixed optics technology is beginning to grab data center networkers' mindshare. Fixed optics represents a continuation of the evolution toward more cost effective optical networks and has a cost impact that reaches beyond the physical layer. An assessment of the cost effectiveness of fixed optics requires a holistic view of the total solutions involving software, switch chips, MAC and PHY layer chips as well as the optical components themselves. This article will look at the factors involved in choosing low-cost fiber over copper in developing data center networking equipment.

Trends in datacenter networking
Data centers increasingly are recognized as a strategic business resource--their effectiveness is directly related to the abilities of an organization to work, collaborate and improve productivity. The data center provides the ability to compute, store and communicate information both internally and externally, and the demand for all of these tasks continues to grow, the result being that the data center has become a progressively larger and more complex pool of interconnected nodes that must be built and maintained under severe budgetary pressure. IT managers adapt to these pressures by aggressively adopting new network architectures and using new software and hardware technologies as they become available.

At the physical implementation level, one trend is toward fragmentation of the data center, a result of expansion into disconnected areas often hundreds of meters apart. At the system design level, the trends are toward consolidation of systems and platforms and virtualization of resources. At the hardware level, newer designs often emphasize more compact hardware form factors such as bladed systems, converged and higher bandwidth network interconnects, and higher speeds of computation, storage and communication.

In the area of interconnect technology, two related trends are in effect: higher data rates and converged fabrics. Data centers generally consist of a number of different types of networked elements such as application servers, storage arrays and perhaps a server cluster for high performance computing (HPC). The different sub-networks were developed independently of each other and have historically used different interconnecting technologies optimized for the purpose at hand. For example, Gigabit Ethernet may be used to network application servers, while Fibre Channel is deployed in the storage area and InfiniBand or other proprietary interconnect in the HPC. The proliferation of interconnects to be supported in the datacenter is an annoyance to administrators and a financial drain on the enterprise. Convergence on a single fabric technology in the data center is a highly sought-after but elusive objective.

Based on port count, Ethernet is by far the most popular interface in use due to its broad and inexpensive hardware and software ecosystem and its familiarity. It makes an ideal candidate for the converged fabric technology except that, having been developed originally as a LAN networking interconnect, it has lacked the performance and features required for use in storage and HPC applications. This changes with 10-Gigabit Ethernet and a host of related developments that provide the performance and features needed to address the storage and HPC sectors of the datacenter. An ecosystem of standards-based, high performance components--network interface cards, switching, processing and physical layer devices--is rapidly developing for 10-Gigabit Ethernet giving it the versatility needed to meet the requirements of specialty interconnects. It appears that at 10 gigabit speeds, Ethernet holds the promise of a converged interconnect for the data center.

Since the adoption of 10-Gigabit Ethernet holds the prospect of not only a move to a higher bandwidth, but also a reduction in the number of supported interconnect technologies, its adoption rate in the data center is likely to be rapid. At this point in time 10-Gigabit Ethernet products have been entering the market and volume-related price reductions are beginning to occur. This soon will lead to the point where the 10x speed increase over Gigabit Ethernet is available at 3x to 4x the price, which historically has been the demarcation point where the newer generation of Ethernet supersedes the incumbent generation.

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