What are the benefits of being a member of the Ethernet Alliance?

Ethernet Alliance members have an opportunity to be seen, influence Ethernet technologies, and make sure that what they have themselves developed follows Ethernet standards and interoperates with other equipment in a safe protected environment.

Ethernet Alliance  membership is very important for those who are developing Ethernet-based products, as well as people who use Ethernet-based products in their companies. Membership provides the opportunity to be involved in the discussions taking place about Ethernet today, which in turn will help shape the Ethernet of tomorrow. For people and companies that want to have an influence, being an Ethernet Alliance member is critical.

Organizations that are creating products incorporating standards-based Ethernet technology have an excellent opportunity to participate in Ethernet Alliance plug-fest activities. These plug-fests allow companies to test and prove their products’ interoperability with other manufacturers’ products. Members can take part in our interoperability demonstrations; these demos take place in large public forums where many people can see products interoperating with other products.

How does the Ethernet Alliance help to expand the Ethernet ecosystem?

It enables the expansion of the Ethernet ecosystem in several ways, for example, our strong relationship with IEEE. We coordinate and host IEEE meetings at which people address Ethernet standards, what the technology should do next, and how it can be improved.

Another thing we do to expand the ecosystem is to provide a place for great minds to meet by creating a space where 15 or 20 diverse companies involved in Ethernet can get on the phone to discuss issues and problems. They’re able to share ideas in a protected way. All of this allows us to develop consensus about what to do next; multiple companies are able to debate different topics and generate fresh ideas, which we can then take as a proposed new standard to industry standards organizations like IEEE. Doing so enables us to extend the ecosystem by adding to it.

These activities allow us to take Ethernet to new places, and to improve its effectiveness in the places that it has already been. We expand the ecosystem via this consortium of people, who are able to have open, honest discussions about how to make Ethernet a better technology.

What makes the Ethernet Alliance a safe place to have these discussions and do this work?

Our plug-fests – which take place at the University of New Hampshire’s Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL) – start with a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). When companies want to test a given characteristic of Ethernet they can come together to demonstrate interoperability of their products regarding that characteristic under the protection of the NDA. With the NDA, the companies agree not to publicly share the specific results of any vendor involved. Results are instead reported under the umbrella of an Ethernet Alliance press release.

This enviroment permits members to come together and look at a ways to fix issues or propose new solutions, and to do so safely. Companies are willing to do this because it enables them to potentially save multiple man-months of development. Bringing a product to a plug-fest gives them access to all the best and brightest minds in the industry, and people that know how to read technology traces. You have people from the storage, adapter, and switching end of the process. When they come together companies can more easily diagnose problems that would have taken an individual company a very long time to solve alone in their own labs.

Why is the Ethernet Alliance making a global push in 2012?

One of the Ethernet Alliance’s strategic initiatives for 2012 is to become more global in focus; we’re reaching into Europe and Asia.

It’s fairly simple – Ethernet and the Internet are used around the world. The need to transmit data and take advantage of what Ethernet offers is global.

We’ll look to establish relationships with industry organizations across Europe and elsewhere – Germany, Dubai, and Hong Kong, to name a few – where  we can co-market and participate in new globally focused activities. Ethernet is everywhere, so we want a global community engaged in our discussions. Reaching out enables us to talk to more people, and involve the whole audience of people and companies using equipment and services based on IEEE 802- and 803 Ethernet standards.

What does the Ethernet Alliance do to ensure interoperability?

Plug-fests lay the foundation and enable our members to bring new or old products in to try out new things. The second thing we do is interoperability demonstrations at tradeshows or events where there are thousands of people in attendance. These demonstrations give us the chance to very publicly show how Ethernet equipment interoperates according to the standards being used.

Interoperability is a simple but important benefit. If you buy Ethernet technology today that works with your standards-based server, you can buy a new server and use that same piece of equipment with it. Without interoperability, you would have to continually replace things in your network and that would be very expensive.

Standards are the foundation of interoperability; once defined, they can be implemented. Companies can add their own ‘special sauce’ but the fundamental piece is that a standards-based product will work with someone else’s version of the same thing.

Through our plug-fests and other interoperability work, the Ethernet Alliance gives consumers a great deal of flexibility in their decision-making process. For example, significant thought goes into how long a given Ethernet cable should be, what speeds it can support, and choosing the proper format for the data. The standard, and its demonstrated interoperability, mean that people can buy that cable with a high degree of confidence that it will work as it is supposed to work. It also enables them to make more staged transitions as their networks evolve. And that is very important.

The reality however, is that each of these moments were far removed from the ultimate commercial success and deployment of the respective technology.  So the question that needs exploration is “When is the moment when you realize something big is about to happen?”

For me, that moment has been when I stood in assorted booths at various shows throughout the years, and participated in industry interoperability demonstrations.  As Chairman of the Ethernet Alliance, I have spoken of this moment as “Real technology for real deployment!”  As an engineer and technologist, these have been great moments; seeing the technology actually work first-hand, as opposed to looking at a specification is an incredible moment.  These demonstrations go a step further though, as multiple individuals and corporations have used these specifications to design products, and when it is all put together – it all works!  This is a critical step into the development of an ecosystem and the ultimate adoption and success of a product or technology.

As noted recently in a blog by Bruce Tolley (http://www.ethernetalliance.org/blog/2012/04/03/intels-romley-server-platform-launch-a-tipping-point-for-10-gigabit-ethernet/), it is anticipated that the introduction of the Intel “Romley” family of processors “will be a catalyst for a broad industry shift from 1 Gigabit to 10 Gigabit connections at the server access edge.”  This shift will have a significant impact on the Ethernet ecosystem. 

With Interop Spring 2012 upon us, the Ethernet Alliance and seven of its member companies have organized an interoperability demonstration that will highlight Ethernet’s capabilities at supporting cloud computing, convergence, and virtualization in data centers, and that features 10GbE and 40GbE solutions.  Showcasing the effortless interoperation of 10G and 40G Ethernet, the network topology of the demo consists of three layers, including 10G attached servers in the access layer linked to multiple 10G switches in the distribution layer aggregated by two 40G core switches. The display illustrates how the latest in Ethernet technology is set to fuel the next generation of the Ethernet Ecosystem.

Showcasing technologies from Cisco, Emulex, Dell Force 10, Nexans, Panduit, QLogic, and Volex, the Ethernet Alliance interoperability demonstration can be found in booth #2360.  On behalf of the Ethernet Alliance, I would like to invite you to come to our booth at Interop, and witness, what is for many, “Our Moment in Time”, where the success of many will begin its journey to fruition.  And if you can’t make it to Interop, join us on Twitter and LinkedIn, where we keep the industry updated on this moment!

For example, server output bandwidth is growing on average at 41%/year¹.  That means servers are pushing twice as much data into the network every two years.   This exponential growth is what is driving servers to move from Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) to 10GbE.  These 10GbE server connections are having an avalanche effect on the rest of the network in the data center.  Within the data center, the growth in core network bandwidth is expected to grow at 58%/year¹ – doubling every 18 months.  Exponential growths at over 10% per year lead to amazing growths.

We’ve all heard about how the Internet is growing exponentially, but it is only growing at 32%/year².  OK, that was a joke because 32%/year is crazy fast growth, but it is still quite smaller than 58% growth.  The bandwidth within the data center is expected to grow faster than the bandwidth out to the Internet because there is much more server-to-server traffic within the data center than server-to-Internet traffic.  Switched bandwidth within the data center can be orders of magnitude less expensive than routed bandwidth to the Internet.  The bandwidth within the data center is expected to grow considerably faster than bandwidth on the Internet.

Exponential growths are hard to imagine as Barnet alludes to.  To get a better understanding of the growth, I pick a few examples and see how bandwidth grows over a decade in Table 1.    The first growth rate in the table shows how a server that pushes 1 Gbps in 2010 and grows at 41%/year would drive 32 Gbps of bandwidth in 2020.  This shows how by the end of the decade, 10GbE won’t be enough bandwidth for servers. Ethernet networks have reached giga-levels so they are growing in Gbps per year now.

Table 1: Examples of Exponential Bandwidth Growth

The network is growing even faster as these server bandwidths are aggregated.  If a switch-to-switch link was pushing 5Gbps in 2010 and growing at 58%/year, then that link will be pushing 506 Gbps in 2020.  This type of growth makes 100GbE look slow. This growth is hard to imagine, but that is what the numbers tell us.  We can listen or not.

I show a couple of other examples in the table for traffic growth to the Internet.  If an Internet data center is delivering 40Gbps in 2010 and growing at 32% per year, then the data center will need 642 Gbps by 2020.  Likewise, the aggregate bandwidth of the Internet was 61 Tbps in 2010.  If the IP traffic continues to grow at 32%/year, then the Internet will push 979Tbps of traffic in 2020.  These astronomical numbers are hard to imagine, but data center operators are getting use to it. 

Many data center planners have gotten used to these giga-scale increases.  If they are deploying 100 servers with 10Gbps connections, then they have Tbps of aggregate bandwidth.  Assuming a scenario where each server is delivering 25Gbps of output within the decade, then a rack with 40 servers can produce a terabit/second (Tbps) of data.  If you have a thousand of these racks in a mega data center, then you’ll get a petabit per second (Pbps or 1,000 Terabits) of bandwidth.  While few mega data centers are being deployed at this scale, lots of data centers can deploy hundreds of 10GbE servers and produce a Tbps of bandwidth within a few racks.  These astronomical numbers are the result of exponential growth.

I’ll be giving a keynote at the “Terabit Optical and Data Networking Conference” on Thursday April 19^th at 9:45am in Cannes, France.  The speech is titled “Terabits in a Rack and Petabits in a Data Center” and I’ll discuss how 10GbE servers can drive terabits of data from a rack and petabits (1,000 terabits) of data through the data center every second.  Imagine moving a petabit/s (Pbps) of bandwidth within the data center to scale applications to unprecedented levels.

I’ve also written a story for Network World titled “Exponential Growth in Bandwidth and Cost Declines”.  This article shows how the costs of networks will need to decline exponentially to maintain the growth rates that are being forecast.  Read the article online here.

Enjoy,

Scott Kipp

President of the Ethernet Alliance

PS.  Tom Palkert will also be representing the Ethernet Alliance and giving a presentation on 100GbE standards on Wednesday, April 18^th at 2:05pm. 

1. http://www.ieee802.org/3/100GCU/public/nov10/CFI_01_1110.pdf
2. http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/sp/vni/vni_forecast_highlights/index.html

Highlights

New integrated PCI Express 3 bus
The current PCIe® 2 bus for server I/O uses 8b/10b encoding, operating at 5 GT/s.  On a PCIe x8 card, PCIe 2 can deliver a maximum bidirectional throughput of 20 Gbps per port.  PCIe 3 doubles the PCIe bandwidth by increasing the transfer rate 60% from 5 to 8 GT/sec and increasing the coding efficiency 23%, from 80 to to 98.5%. PCIe 3 therefore enables on a dual-port PCIe x8 card a theoretical maximum bidirectional throughput of 40 Gbps. In short, Romley promises a significant increase in server I/O by enabling full- bandwidth, four-port 10GbE server adapters as well as dual-port 40GbE server adapters. For more detail on how the PCIe 3 doubles the PCIe 2 bandwidth, see the table below and http://www.pcisig .com/news_room/faqs/pcie3.0_faq

Performance
Romley offers IT managers building clusters and data centers a very big speed increase, arguably bigger than the standard Moore’s law improvement. Intel states that Romley will deliver 80% more performance over the previous Westmere generation.  Why is this good for networking? If IT managers and network architects can find the right applications —many pundits point to cloud, virtualization, and big data —, those applications running on Romley servers can easily fill 10GbE pipes, and, after the time delay pointed out below, 40 GbE pipes. According to Crehan Research, in conjunction with the ramp of Romley-based servers, 10GbE port shipments are expected to become a majority of server ports by 2014, and to continue to increase as a portion of total ports through 2016. See http://www.crehanresearch.com/

Latency reductions
Unlike previous generations where I/O operations were managed by a different chip, the newly supported PCIe 3 functionality has been brought directly into the main processor.  This integration of I/O significantly reduces latency and improves data throughput. Latency matters to the early adopters who will pay real money for these servers, such as the high-frequency traders (HFT) in Chicago, London, and New York and high-performance compute (HPC) customers around the world.

Intel has also streamlined its caching architecture with a functionality called Intel Data Direct I/O (DDIO) that further reduces latency and increases energy efficiency and throughput.  With DDIO, a PCIe server adapter (or controller LOM) communicates directly to the processor’s last-level cache rather than making a detour to system memory on ingress or egress. 

Looking forward to the next 12 months
Romley will be a catalyst for a broad industry shift from 1 Gigabit to 10 Gigabit connections at the server access edge.  But analogous to the transition from PCIe 1.x to 2.0, it takes time and focus to develop the PCIe 3 ecosystem. Behind the scenes, Intel and the PCIe community (OEMs, adapter vendors, chipset vendors, IP vendors, and test equipment companies) are doing a lot of heavy lifting to promote interoperability testing and plugfests. Based on vendor press releases, initial applications appear to be mostly storage, graphics, and Infiniband PCIe cards. It is expected that PCIe 3 support for 10GbE and 40GbE server adapter cards will arrive in late 2012.

Bottom line
On the plus side, customers will see some amazing performance when plugging very fast PCIe 2 x8 10GbE server cards into Romley.  With first deployments, we should see the 10GbE switch to server attach rates dramatically increase and, over time, a move to 40GbE at the server access edge.

Bruce Tolley
Vice President, Solutions Marketing
Solarflare
btolley@solarflare.com
iPhone 650.862.1074
www.solarflare.com

So what happens to the Ethernet Ecosystem with this new port type?  Will this have an impact on the ever exponential growing bandwidth demand?  What services will be offered?  Are automobiles the next “cubicle” that will need to be worried about in developing enterprise networks?  All reasonable questions , and all possible development efforts that could drive another surge in industry activity.

From its inception the Ethernet Alliance has always espoused a philosophy that Ethernet goes from carriers to consumers.  Its very charter is to support the market expansion and continuing development of IEEE 802 Ethernet standards.  This latest effort represents another step in Ethernet’s continuing saga, and the Ethernet Alliance stands ready to support Ethernet, its members, and the industry.

John D’Ambrosia
Chair, Ethernet Alliance Board of Directors

• 100G to the Cloud – the demonstration shows how a data center connects to a cloud service provider over 100G connectivity with 100GBASE-LR4, 100GBASE-SR10 and 100G OTN.
• 100G Optical Transport Network – The Ethernet Alliance is showcasing a 100G OTN connection that can span hundreds of kilometers between a data center and a cloud service provider.
• Second Generation 100GBASE-LR4 modules – This is the only place at OFC that is demonstrating these lower cost 100GBASE-LR4 modules that use directly modulated lasers to 10km reaches.
• 100G Traffic Generators – Two traffic generators are creating up to 100Gbps of traffic and sending it from data centers to the cloud.
• 40GbE Switching – One data center has 40GbE connectivity between servers and switches.
• 4x10GbE Uplinks to the Cloud – 40GbE QSFP ports are often broken out into 4x10GbE and we demonstrate this connectivity with octopus breakout cables.
• Ethernet Fabrics – Top-of-rack switches overcome the limitations of the Spanning Tree Protocol to form a 10GbE fabric.
• Past, Present and Future of Ethernet Optics – Posters highlights the evolution of Ethernet (and the optics that enabled it) over the decades and into the future.
• Live painting demonstration -  Joyce Poisson will paint data centers connecting to clouds via rainbows of light on the afternoons of the Tuesday March 6^th and Wednesday March 7^th.
• Panel on “Next-Gen 100GbE Optics  “ – Kapil Shikhande will host a panel of experts on Ethernet switching, optical transceivers and optical markets on March 7^th at 1-2pm in the Expo Theater II (614)
• Panel on “From Gigabit to Terabit Ethernet” – I will host a set of presentations from the largest selling optics vendor, switch vendor and Internet traffic provider on March 7^th at 2-3pm in the Expo Theater II (614)
• Static demonstration of Ethernet-base wireless antennas, 100GbE switching blades and optical cabling

The booth will also feature a café with plenty of tables and chairs for hanging out and talking about the latest lasers at OFC. We’ve really knocked ourselves out to create the largest demonstration that the Ethernet Alliance has ever put together.  Please stop by our booth that is located near the concession stands on the far left of the entrance. 

Kind regards,

Scott Kipp

President of the Ethernet Alliance

On June 13, 2002, IEEE Std 802.3ae-2002^TM, otherwise known as the 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) standard, was ratified. Shortly after the ratification of this standard, the industry saw a new generation of networking and the explosion of the Gigabit Ethernet market.  These networking technologies helped fuel the likes of companies such as Google and Facebook, and the mass deployment of Gigabit Ethernet servers arguably set the bar for what the Ethernet industry identifies as a successful standard.

Since that time, multiple standards targeting various 10GbE physical layer specifications like 10GBASE-CX4, 10GBASE-KX4, 10GBASE-KR, 10GBASE-LRM, and 10GBASE-T, have been introduced. Then in June 2010 IEEE Std 802.3ba-2010^TM introduced 40GbE and 100GbE to the industry. However, the next wave of networking fueled by wide scale deployment of 10GbE servers has not happened. 

This is about to change, as Intel’s Romley server platform with 10G LOM is set to drive wide-scale adoption of 10GbE. Yet, this expectation and the relative newness of 40GbE and 100GbE have the market asking whether 40GbE and 100GbE is set to go. Is the technology real? Is it interoperable?

Answering these questions is the part of the mission of the Ethernet Alliance, which has organized various interoperability plugfests and demonstrations since 2010. One such example is the interoperability plugfest held in June 2011, which successfully demonstrated the interoperability between various 40GbE and 100GbE systems and technologies. Other examples include the 10GbE and 40GbE Interoperability demonstrations at SuperComputing 2010 and 2011. All of these prove that 40GbE and 100GbE technologies are indeed viable.

The industry is anticipating that in 2012, the wide-scale deployment of servers based on 10GbE will start but ultimately, this deployment will be dependent upon 40GbE and 100GbE, which will be used to aggregate 10GbE-based servers. The Ethernet Alliance understands the importance of 40GbE and 100GbE as it approaches OFC/NFOEC.  The industry needs to understand that 40GbE and 100GbE are not just paper specifications, but are real technologies for real deployment today.  Visit the Ethernet Alliance in OFC/NFOEC booth 724 and see for yourself.

My talk will be primarily focused on things that have progressed from R&D and are quite real in the things we are doing today in our data centers.

We are currently in the process of building a brand new data center that, to add to our currently functioning data centers, that will help us scale to serve our growing customer needs. While we will have a state-of-the art data center, we’d like to achieve three other major goals.

1. Reduce our operating costs and the complexity of our infrastructure and  hardware footprint by actively adopting .  Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) as the core foundation of how we design our network architecture  blending network and data on the same physical media.
2. Allow easy provisioning, seamless extensibility and scalability  across all of our data centers, to facilitate optimum usage of all available capacity using emerging technologies to extend our layer 2 networks between operating facilities.
3. Improve our energy efficiency posture and green footprint by aspiring for LEED Gold standards, and adopting efficient cooling technologies and data center rack layouts.

What challenges do you face building your new data center?

Our Tier II data center, primarily used for DR and testing purposes, was built decades ago and as time passed the location is not ideal considering the expected growth and future reliability needs. The initial sense of urgency has given way to a feeling of opportunity to build a data center that is much more efficient, cost effective and scalable.

With our stated objective of ensuring that we utilize the capacity of all our data centers, and to realize better DR planning and utilization spikes, we plan to run our datacenters in a active-active configuration where applications run live in two of the data centers, with each facility having the necessary capacity to run 100% of the application workload However the configuration comes at the price of network latency, and will be a large factor in  driving decisions about location, network design etc.

Size and scale of data centers are also an overriding issue. Ideally, for both location and capacity, we would want to plan in such a way that there is enough room to grow and sustain for forseeable future without getting constrained by real-estate or utilities.

With the growing cost of energy, managing energy and real-estate costs are another set of overarching concern we have to consider.

What is Ethernet’s role in your planning?

The adoption of recent advances in ethernet-based technologies  form the backbone of planning and developing of our datacenters. The datacenter will support 10G, but can scale to 40G and beyond in future. Given we have the opportunity to build everything from scratch, we are more than eager to use ethernet standards and implementations, such as Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), virtual Port Channel, Next Gen Layer2 and OTV. We expect that the merger of network and storage protocols on a single fabric combined with the advances in virtual networks will provide capabilities that we can exploit today and in the future. Since new builds are generally less painful than in-place upgrades, our remaining challenge will be the upgrade of the infrastructure of our existing Tier IV facility to bring its capabilities in line with our new data center.  Organizationally, today’s world is very real-time and transactional in nature, which is why we are building an active/active data center.

We deliberate extensively on the impact of “Cloud” on the design and architecture of our data centers. While it will continue to evolve and drive some of our decisions, however, cloud implementations for us is less an infrastructure architecture issue and more of enterprise process issue. The challenges of implementation of private or hybrid clouds do impact from our network architecture choices, but the processes we adopt surrounding industry regulatory constraints, privacy issues and liability issues, are bigger catalysts to the posture take to architect anything different for Cloud.

How are you improving energy efficiency in the new data center?

We are hoping to build our new data center in a way that enables us to achieve the LEED Gold Standard. While we are environmentally conscious, we also want to recognize the economic benefits of adopting efficient data center technologies . We are incorporating air-side economizers as well as the use of hot-aisle containment to more efficiently cool our data center hall. Additionally, on-site backup diesel storage will allow us to operate for several days in the absence of grid power.

Adopting industry energy efficient standards also results in a gamut of improvements in all aspects of structural developments from insulation standards to material reuse   that will add up to substantial cost efficiency. Our data center is currently being built to a 10G Ethernet standard and it is scalable as new bandwidth standards emerge. All of the technologies involved in the data center offer some form of energy conservation, which provides us with functional value as well as energy savings.

Q: What is, in your opinion, the biggest connectivity challenge the broadcast communications industry faces today?

TR: There are a number of challenges that we face on a day-to-day basis, such as signal timing and deterministic performance of media, but it comes down to clearly communicating the advantages and benefits of a given technology choice to our customers.

Signal timing and deterministic performance of media are some of the most difficult things to address when moving from a non-buffered discrete coaxial cable to an IP media stream, particularly when you take into account QoS provisions. In transitioning to an IP-based environment, there needs to be a certain amount of provisioning at varying levels. Right now, we’re achieving this by bridging between the coax and IP environments, but the true challenge will be to eliminate the coax environment entirely, rather than having to rely on this bridging process.

This is not a new idea – conceptually, the idea of migrating broadcast signals from discrete coaxial to packetized IP has been around since Gigabit Ethernet was introduced. Adoption however has been slow, mostly due to inertia in the industry in terms of workflows, how people do things, and legacy issues, preserving existing infrastructure. It takes awhile to effect change. There’s a lot of education that needs to take place in order to alert customers that IP is a good thing. It’s a little bit of a catching-up thing for an industry that has been held back as much by its own legacy as technological issues.

Q: If educating others is critical to your business, then what is the one thing you want the people behind Ethernet to know or to hear about?

TR: It has to be compatibility and ease-of-use. There’s something intrinsically easy about having devices with dedicated “inputs” and “outputs”, installing a new piece of equipment is as simple and quick as connecting an output to an input to have it work correctly. It’s sort of like the plug-and-play model; when you’re setting up a TV at home, you just have to plug the cables in. But if you’ve ever configured anything with an Ethernet cord, it’s not the same experience. You need some form of console, or user interface, you have to know about IP addressing, you have to get your device to work with the router…there’s a certain amount of complexity that you have to deal with, and when things don’t work, it’s very difficult to troubleshoot.

Take for example, my Xbox. Microsoft wants the Xbox to be a media hub for the home, so one of the things it does is to allow you to access a home computer and play back media from that computer. It took me quite some time to get my Xbox to work because of a firewall issue. I wasn’t sure where the failure was occurring – I didn’t know if it was my router, my PC, Windows networking or the console itself. It was difficult to troubleshoot the situation, and I’m a highly skilled guy. Even the basic troubleshooting skill of isolating an issue to hardware, software or configuration is compounded when networking issues are added.

If a similar issue was to occur in a broadcast facility, where business and revenue are on the line, and it took them an abnormally long amount of time to solve, it would be a big problem. Broadcasting is a 24 by 7 on-air operation. Engineers and system architects love, and are willing to pay for, redundancy. However this doesn’t translate easily into a networked IP environment, where failures can cascade across even seemingly redundant systems. Everyone can see the benefits such as cost saving and increased flexibility of networked IP infrastructure, but they have to be able to realize those benefits without undue amounts of pain. The gap between what “theoretically” should work and what “practically” does work needs to be eliminated.

Q: What’s some of the biggest impacts of content on server connectivity?

TR: For broadcast media, there’s a lot of concern about how media is being protected, and whether it’s too easy to steal. There are media security and rights, as well as network and resource access aspects to this issue. We need to make our data more secure but not so much that it’s difficult to get to. A lot of this is being addressed of at consumer level and in-home implementations; less so inside the professional broadcast facility. Traditionally, there has not been lot of risk management principles being applied to the media itself. Security often means secured access to a given file or tape, however, if your content is being routed and delivered over a networked infrastructure, you have to have more built-in security features because digital theft becomes much easier. Someone from outside the country can now steal an asset that could before only been stolen by someone inside the building. Network configuration, VPN’s, provisioning, access and management are critical issues, and all have impact on workflow, accessibility and overall system reliability

Q: What is the one thing you have to say about Ethernet as a technology today?

TR: Right now, the industry tends to look at networking media and the management of networking as entirely separate applications. There are a lot of tools out there for managing and provisioning, but they need to be more tightly embedded into the overall solution. Having an engineer come out to set up the switch, then a security expert come out and set up the security…it’s inefficient. There are too many experts and specializations required to implement and manage networks today. We need to see more of a plug-and-play model.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 made big advances over previous versions in terms of networking – it’s way more intuitive than it was before. That type of intuitiveness needs to span any device that has an IP connection. You simply can’t have a situation where every manufacturer, device and application, does it a little bit differently. By the way, my XBOX – PC issue turned out to be a problem between Windows Media Center and the Windows 7 Firewall. Greater standardization would help alleviate this problem, but as this example shows, getting there is going to be difficult. In the long run though, interoperability is a primary barrier to Ethernet adoption.

Q: What other challenges would you like to see addressed across the Ethernet ecosystem?

TR: From the technical side QoS issues need to be addressed, either as dedicated “virtual” circuits or in some other manner where it is easy to see and manage how one device or application connects to another. I believe there should be a certain amount of self-discovery and self-awareness between devices that can connect together. Anything on a given segment or domain must be able to understand what else is on the network, what it can “connect” to and what the rules are for provisioning such a circuit. For example, if you have a network delivering video in real-time and somewhere else someone decides to run a browser while yet somewhere else a scheduled process begins a backup, it must not interfere with the video stream. We need to see greater coexistence. There also needs to be a better, more accurate way of knowing exactly what’s happening on a network, and not requiring someone with a master’s degree in order to do so.

The Ethernet Alliance is proud to bring a cadre of end users together at the upcoming End Users Speak! Technology Exploration Forum (TEF).  While past TEFs were mainly deep dives into emerging technologies, this TEF – the 5^th – has a different perspective as it seeks to gather input regarding the needs from the end-user community.  This TEF is a bridge to people who are deploying the technology today and planning for the future. 

Leveraging their years of contacts, Manoj Wadekar of QLogic and John D’Ambrosia of Dell brought together a variety of end users to talk about their Ethernet needs now and in the future.  From those individuals interested in the physical layers to those interested in protocols.  From carriers to data centers, these individuals represent a diverse array of applications and perspectives that are brought together in one event.

The end users will talk in three panels and four keynotes described below:

1. Ethernet in Future Data Centers – Ramanujam Rao of Nationwide Insurance, Fred Hartley of Chevron and Matt Estes of Walt Disney – moderated by Robert Hays of Intel
2. Ethernet and the Heart of the Internet – Martin Pels of AMS-IX, Shamim Akhtar of Comcast, Jay Behrens of Frontier Communications – hosted by Brad Smith of Lightcounting
3. Keynote of Jeremy Stinson of My Yearbook
4. The Role of Power in Networks – Bruce Nordman of Lawrence Berkely National Laboratories, Una Song of the Environmental Protection Agency and Bob Felderman of Google – moderated by Mike Bennet of LBNL
5. Keynote by Parantap Lahiri of Microsoft
6. Broadcast’s Bandwidth Demands by Todd Roth of Harris
7. The IEEE and Ethernet’s Future – Paul Nikolich – YAS Broadband Ventures and Chair of IEEE 802

The importance of this event and the potential it offers goes beyond the speakers.  Some of the speakers have already written Q&A about their Ethernet needs and the results can be found here: http://www.ethernetalliance.org/blog/

In the Q&A, Paul Nikolich wrote:

Other opportunities include expanding Ethernet into automotive applications.  The global automotive industry has begun to deploy Ethernet into vehicles. Application examples include vehicle control (brakes, suspension, transmission, ECU, etc.) and infotainment. 

Also, consider moving beyond today’s RJ-45 connector common to networking.  Smaller Ethernet connections for handheld consumer devices, such as mobile telephones, could open up a new world of applications.  Imagine how these worlds could collide.  People could connect their mobile phones to their car’s network to gain access to all the automobiles resources, and at the same time be recharging their phone’s battery using Power-over-Ethernet.  The car could even become part of someone’s business network, too.

Michael Bennett wrote:

A conservative estimate that was made said that about $450 million a year in energy savings could be achieved once the market was completely saturated with 802.3az (Energy Efficient Ethernet) devices. We won’t know how close the forecast is for years to come.

From power consumption to new applications like Ethernet in automobiles, the End Users Speak! TEF will spend the day exploring the needs of Ethernet.  We hope that you can make the event and learn even more by talking to these end users.  Sign up for this rare and intimate opportunity at:

http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e5fpnzr7fab7a9a2&llr=iejgf4bab

While supporting existing and developing Ethernet standards is an important part of the Ethernet Alliance’s mission, so is supporting consensus building within the industry.  Take advantage of this great opportunity to come and participate in the discussion regarding the future of Ethernet.  I hope to see you there!

Scott Kipp

President of the Ethernet Alliance