We once wrote about how networks are hungry ogres for more bandwidth and speed. The demand to manage and store humongous amount of data is the norm for most growing businesses today. Our previous posts on Whether 10 Gigabit Ethernet is a practical solution for your business and another one on making the case for how 10 Gigabit Ethernet forms the foundation for high performance networks should be a good place to start if you need to know more.
Most companies are still in the phase of moving from the Gigabit Ethernet to 10 Gigabit Ethernet – even though 10 Gigabit Ethernet is not as new as most people think it is. 10 Gigabit Ethernet could really be the solution you are looking for. You should, however, be informed about a few realities. Here are some:
10 Gigabit Ethernet isn’t expensive, really
We aren’t saying it’s cheap; but it certainly isn’t prohibitively expensive too. The hitherto wide gap between Gigabit Ethernet and the 10 Gigabit Ethernet is steadily closing in. In fact, it makes more sense economically to use 10 Gigabit Ethernet in some instances where your network has to deal with high-traffic and extensive data. We shouldn’t forget to state that cooling, power requirements and physical space is still a concern here for most companies to host 10 Gigabit Ethernet as a solution.
Optical Fibres, State-of-the-art receivers are not the only elements for 10 Gigabit Ethernet
Contrary to popular belief, businesses don’t have to stay invested in state-of-the-art, expensive elements to build a 10 Gigabit Ethernet Network. You have plenty of options – all the way from low-cost optical cables, twinax copper cables, etc. Servers, switches and other network hardware are also available for low cost. Further, plenty of products are up in the anvil, about to be launched, based on 10 GBase-T which offers businesses options to use twisted pair cabling using RJ45 connectors which should work up to distances of up to 100 metres.
10 Gigabit Ethernet isn’t a requirement to build data centres
Data centre Fabric switches are a wonderful, low-cost way for most businesses which have options for you to use Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet options. These options obviously go easy on your wallet while giving data centre managers seamless connectivity, low-latency and even allow you to use your existing servers which might not have any 10 GbE adapters so to speak.
40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet is still far away, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is the logical first move
40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet are bleeding-edge technologies that are still a far cry for most businesses still operating on basic networks. The switches that support the 40 GbE and 100GbE are just about creeping into the market – most of them are proprietary and are still in the nascent stage. Also, the price of these technologies is prohibitive to say the least. As usual, until the technology is more broadly accepted and used, the prices will remain high and hence out of bounds for many growing businesses still grappling with their networking issues.
10 Gigabit Ethernet is hot and it’s where the future is pointing to. Knowing these realities should help you make better decisions, we hope.
What do you think?
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