Deciding the future of Ethernet

Component designers discuss the next frontiers for the venerable technology.

Scaling Ethernet to new heights - as much as 100Gbps - and developing 10G Ethernet for copper wiring and internal system backplanes were among the chief issues at last week's DesignCon conference in Santa Clara.

Customers and producers of Ethernet say the need for scaling the technology to 100Gbps and for a 100 Gigabit Ethernet standard is approaching faster than expected.

The use of Ethernet inside computers and switch chassis, and 10G Ethernet over copper could result in performance gains and cost savings for customers of corporate LAN gear in the near future, industry insiders say.

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Scaling Ethernet to new heights - as much as 100Gbps - and developing 10G Ethernet for copper wiring and internal system backplanes were among the chief issues at last week's DesignCon conference in Santa Clara.

Customers and producers of Ethernet say the need for scaling the technology to 100Gbps and for a 100 Gigabit Ethernet standard is approaching faster than expected.

The use of Ethernet inside computers and switch chassis, and 10G Ethernet over copper could result in performance gains and cost savings for customers of corporate LAN gear in the near future, industry insiders say.

Breaking 100

"It's time to start a higher-speed study group in the IEEE," says Mike Bennett, senior network engineer at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), who spoke at a 100G Ethernet panel at the event, which mostly drew members of the component and silicon design community.

Bennett said the bandwidth needs among his peers at other U.S. Department of Energy labs and among carrier networks will soon call for a 100Gbps standard. Current use of 10G Ethernet, and the need to aggregate 10G links are driving this requirement.

There is some support in the design community for Ethernet to follow the progression of SONET technology's transmission speed, as 10G Ethernet development stayed close to SONETOC-192 specifications. OC-768, at around 40Gbps, is the rarified highest-level speed of SONET available. Bennett thinks the bandwidth needs of high-end users and carriers will exceed 40Gbps by the time such a standards effort gets into motion; moving to 100G is better planning for the future.

"We've always been an Ethernet shop," Bennett said. "And our whole upgrade plan is based on scaling by factors of 10, so it would just be a natural progression to go to 100G Ethernet."

LBNL uses several 10G links in its data centers to aggregate switch connections and links to supercomputer clusters, used for computer-intensive energy research.

"We're getting to the point where 10G Ethernet is taking off, and at some point you're going to need to aggregate those links," Bennett said.

Ethernet inside

Ethernet also is catching on as a backplane technology for a variety of gear, including blade-server chassis, core LAN and metropolitan-area network Ethernet switches and routers, and broadband wireless and DSL access equipment.