Put your finger on any company today and chances are that they have an insatiable demand for bandwidth. Data-intensive applications like video production and hosting, managed services, VoIP, Streaming media, etc, are adding to the burdened backs of many companies already. Data centres are well-known resource hogs.
What is the way out? What can be the panacea to cure off this problem of lack of enough bandwidth?
The answer?
10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GigE) transmission technology.
It is increasingly hailed as the “next step in network evolution” [1] but there’s nothing new about this technology. In fact, it’s been around for more than a decade now since 1999. The only thing that changed with the new 10 GigE transmission technology with the older Ethernet networks is that the half-duplex network communication protocol – the one that relies on CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access / Collision Detection) which waits to see if the network is free to send/receive packets of information. This used to slow down network transmission speeds although it was the reason why Ethernet succeed as a technology.
With 10 gigabit speeds though, CSMA/CD technology just doesn’t measure up. That explains the full-duplex network operation that takes away the need for “waiting” and instead enables network nodes to send packets of information anytime.
The billion dollar question: Should you go for it?
As we mentioned before, 10 GigE standard isn’t new at all; it’s been around for ages. It’s just that the world is waking up to it now thanks to the ever increasing demands on networks. Each company has different networking needs and it’s important to look into your specific needs and plan accordingly instead of going for the vibrant push for 10 GigE standards by vendors.
Things you should look out for:
- 10 GigE standards are complex and come with incompatibility issues. Also, the technology itself has a myriad of hardware related issues apart from signals and logical problems associated with it. Either you have a great networking team in-house or you may let IT consultants do it for you.
- Consolidated data centres (which seems to be the prevailing trend to save costs), place more demands on the core of networks. A good example is that of HP which axed plenty of its 85 data centres to just six of them while being presented with much more traffic and an increased appetite for more bandwidth.
Doubtlessly, 10 GigE standards are all about improved network performance. 10 GigE switches come some new generation network management features to help network administrators guarantee security and SLA (Service Level Agreements). 10 GigE standards also support 30 watts of power required for the new wireless access points and many IP devices such as video cameras, etc.
If more bandwidth, robust network management, speed of transmission, energy efficiency are your goals to improve your network on the edge, 10 GigE certainly seems to be the choice transmission standard you must adopt.
What do you think?
References:
[1] Techtarget.com
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