10Gb Ethernet: Finally Ready for Prime Time?

Implications: 1) The big Web titans like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo are consuming, at an incredible speed, of nuts-anf bolts hardware - storage, servers, routers and switches. 2) Google itself even launch projects to design its own home-grown 10GbE switches when commerical options couldnot meet the power/cost targets required for its data centers. 3) Sounds like 10GbE optics finally come of age for prime time.    

Analysis:

The bandwidth growth is still at 75-125% rate driven by the demand in Internet usage, e-commerce, IPTV, VoIP and wireless communications. So nowadays more and more Gigabit Ethernet-based enterprise servers and applications continue to migrate to 10 GbE.

In spite of the fact that the cost for 10GbE switch ports and server adapters is expected to continue to drop rapidly due to the the availability of low cost 10GbE optical and copper PHY technologies, 10GbE equipment and component market currently still represents a very small, but rapidly growing, market. 

Google example is one of the several things which have a large impact on how 10GbE optics market to evolves. The big Web titans such as Google has created a huge wave of hardware spending for 10GbE switch makers, e.g. Force10, Cisco, Juniper and many others. It is reported the big Five web titans (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon and Ebay) are spending a total of over $5B on networking gears. Both Microsoft and Google are talking about to spend heavily ~$2B for its internet infrastructures including rouers/switches needed to shunt the data around. 

It is worthwhile to mention the state-of-the-art switches enabled by SFP+ transceivers, a new 10GbE MSA form factor. The SFP+ module is built upon the classic SFP module used for 1Gb/s, but with electrical and mechanical enhancement for operation up to 10Gb/s. SFP+ allows for the creation of as many as 48 ports of 10GbE links on a single 19" rack, allowing the low cost/power enabling the same port densities as the SFP module.

On the other hand, for some of the critical internet aggregation point, as many as 8 10GbE lanes have been aggregated to handle the current bandwidth demand. It is expected soon 10GbE willnot be sufficient to cope with the bandwidth demands at these aggregation junctions. Currently IEEE 802.3 HSSG (soon to be 802.3ba task force) is investigating the next 100Gb/s rates targeting network aggregation. The development of 100Gb/s aggregation rates will significantly drive up the volume for the 10GbE shipping.  

With these being said, in light of current 10GbE deployment and IEEE progress for next higher ethernet rates, its expected 10GbE is soon to replace 1GbE and become the mainstream for the networking deployments.