Notes from Interop '09: 40/100 GigE Adoption

Walking around the show floor at Interop in Las Vegas this year you were certain to see hyperbole everywhere (not to mention live boxing matches hosted by Xirrus). “World’s largest” and “world’s fastest” seem to be commonplace on dozens of booths. Reminds me of the street I grew up on where there were two pizza places that claimed they had the "world’s best pizza". After a while you become a bit numb to it all and look for a conversation with folks talking about what they are doing to help foster innovation in the networking industry.

One group that seemingly doesn't rely on these stunts is the Ethernet Alliance. More than 25 years ago Ethernet was introduced and over the decades it has become critical to networking even as it continues to evolve. During many of those years the Ethernet Alliance has been a part of supporting and promoting Ethernet; providing an industry voice for the IEEE 802 Ethernet standards.

Talking with Ethernet Alliance Chairman Brad Booth amongst the hubbub of Interop he defined his groups mission simply;

“After the IEEE introduces a standard, they are not there to answer questions or promote the standard to move it into the market faster. The Ethernet Alliance fills that hole.”

The key, according to Booth, is listening to the other members of the Alliance to figure out what they are working on, and socialize the work in the industry.

“We participate heavily in the IEEE standards, but we rely on our members to inform us and each other where to focus. This includes 10GigE, 40GigE and 100GigE.” Booth continued "With the tough economy and no official standards for 40/100 GigE, people do have important questions about the continued evolution of Ethernet. We help answer these questions."

According to Booth, reports have shown that bandwidth has doubled as the economy went down during the past few months, showing a greater need for Ethernet than ever before. Perhaps this is the result of more people working from home, searching for jobs or simply staying in and downloading movies rather than going to the theater. No matter the reason, network equipment manufacturers and service providers are racing to keep up with the immense and disparate needs of network users. That of course brings up the topic of 40/100 GigE.

Although still not a standard, Booth does see 40/100 GigE becoming a reality in 12 months. This is being driven by the trends we just discussed above, but also by new initiatives such as cloud computing. As companies rely more on the cloud to host their infrastructure and services the need for a faster standard becomes paramount. Earlier in the week while talking with Univa UD CEO Jason Liu, he mentioned seeing mass adoption of cloud still 24-36 months away. This amount of time would give the new Ethernet standards the time for proper validation to move beyond the marketing hype that has surrounded the 40/100 GigE standards and make a significant impact to the next generation of networking services.

Many folks are just now moving to 10 GigE, as demonstrated in last year's data from Infonetics Research, and this was validated by the conversations I had throughout the Interop show floor this week. We should always look ahead, of course, but establishing the methods for truth in testing for what is being deployed today should be a prominent goal. This means testing with the RIGHT type of blended application traffic and live security strikes at the performance levels required for your product.

Easier said than done of course, since many solutions stumble even at the 10 GigE level when you start moving beyond simple HTTP, and we all know our network is more than HTTP (this is, of course, a key driver behind the BreakingPoint network processor based architecture that is leading to much needed change in the testing industry). As we continue to speak about truth in testing here at BreakingPoint Labs, the Ethernet Alliance advances the importance and relevancy of all Ethernet technologies. It certainly made for an interesting conversation at Interop and I'm sure continued conversation throughout our industry.