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SCMP Reporter

The tenfold increase in bandwidth following the standardisation of 10Base-T Ethernet in 1995, seemed at the time to offer most users more than enough capacity to meet their needs for many years to come.

  That was before today's trend of putting 100Base-T connections at the desktop level and its exponentially higher-speed connections at the server and backbone level.

  Gigabit Ethernet, the next logical step in the evolution of the original 10-Mbps Ethernet or 10Base-T standard, will provide 10 times the bandwidth of Fast Ethernet - a raw data bandwidth of 1,000 Mbps - while maintaining full compatibility with the installed base of over 90 million Ethernet nodes.

  The initial application for Gigabit Ethernet will be as a backbone for 10 and 100-Mbit Ethernet users.

  As CPU and bus technology becomes faster and cheaper, Gigabit Ethernet will be used for high-speed file server connectivity.

  In future, some power users may use Gigabit Ethernet at the desktop.

  Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet share the same frame format.

  This allows a simple buffered store-and-forward speed conversion from 10 to 100 Mbps, or from 100 to 1,000 Mbps.

  In contrast, a more complex bridging or routing algorithm is required to go from Ethernet to FDDI, or a resource-intensive frame-to-cell conversion to go from Ethernet to ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode).

  Although Gigabit Ethernet and ATM are often depicted as competing technologies, they can be combined to create effective corporate intranets.

  New applications providing multimedia or interactive video capabilities are particularly sensitive to latency or latency variation (jitter).

  Only ATM can provide the quality of service to enable these applications to operate efficiently over the network.

  ATM is also quickly becoming the predominant wide-area network (WAN) transport.

  But while ATM has a richer feature set, if it cannot be deployed end-to-end, it requires two conversions - frames to cells, and the other from LAN addressing to ATM addressing - and it entails a certain amount of investment and training to deploy.

  Many mainstream business applications, however, still rely on the broadcast capabilities of traditional Ethernet networks and do not require a specific 'quality of service' guarantee.

  In these environments, Gigabit Ethernet will extend the life of existing frame-based networks and can complement ATM backbones and WAN applications.

  So what are the implications of Gigabit Ethernet on network designs?   The two most significant are link distance and the physical extent of a repeated segment.

  As with original Ethernet, different distances are supported over various physical media.

  The goals set by the IEEE 802.3z Task Force (currently comprising representatives from 50 leading computer, networking and semiconductor companies) include: up to 500 metres over multi-mode fibre, up to two kilometres over single-mode fibre, and at least 25 metres over copper.

  The standard is expected to be completed in 1998 as an extension of the 10/100 Mbps Ethernet standard.

  Ethernet has demonstrated itself to be the world's favourite network technology and for all the right reasons: it is simple, cost effective, widely implemented, and it works.

  Fast Ethernet maintained this model of simplicity and ease of use, and Gigabit Ethernet is being designed to follow this tradition.

  So what is the downside to all this? The significant challenges in the deployment of Gigabit Ethernet really lie in the physical layer, or more specifically in the distance versus bandwidth trade-off.

  For example, category five wiring was never rated for gigabit speeds and certainly not at 100 metres.

  The best approach for both Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet is to configure small groups of users using lower-cost repeater technology and connect the segment to a switched port.

  This approach balances cost and performance. It keeps the number of users to a reasonable level for sharing bandwidth and eliminates the configuration issues raised by reduced network diameter.

  Using the right combination of shared and switched Gigabit Ethernet will make it possible to support an extensive number of stations over a virtually unlimited distance.

  As Fast Ethernet makes its transition to a widespread desktop technology, a faster backbone network is becoming necessary.

  As systems get even faster, and technology improves, Gigabit Ethernet will migrate to the desktop.

  Simply put, faster systems require faster networking, input/output, memory throughput and access to larger memory and storage in order to remain balanced.

  Fast Ethernet is a good solution for today's needs, but tomorrow's requirements will need more: Gigabit Ethernet. Peter Ciceri is vice-president and general manager of UB Networks Asia-Pacific.



Gigabit Ethernet next step in fast evolution