Speeding up the Internet by bouncing data off the ceiling(extremetech.com)
extremetech.com
Speeding up the Internet by bouncing data off the ceiling
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/109765-speeding-up-the-internet-by-bouncing-data-off-the-ceiling
3 comments
Link to actual paper: http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/publications/pdf/beam3d-hot...
"For example, if the baseline traffic on a data center network is 1Gbps, but peaks at 10Gbps for just a few minutes at lunch time… do you wire the entire data center up with costly 10Gbps gear, or just admit that there’ll be lots of latency and packet loss at peak times?"
Heh. The article makes this a 1G or 10G choice. Haven't they heard of 802.3ad?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation
Kludge.
Heh. The article makes this a 1G or 10G choice. Haven't they heard of 802.3ad?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation
Kludge.
Did you see that cunning sleight of verbiage?
1Gbps is a single link speed.
10Gbps is an aggregate for all links in the data center.[1]
Even $99 low end consumer ethernet switches have an aggregate speed of 16Gbps.
For this to make any sense at all you have to have a switch in the rack aggregating traffic but still be using a 1Gbps ethernet back to a more central switch. The cost of a 10Gbps link isn't too bad when spread over a rack of equipment. Compare that to the cost of an RF system that has to be engineered for the exact physical installation, still needs a >1Gbps uplink port on the rack switch, and silently breaks if someone sets a cardboard box on top of a rack.
[1] Their number, not mine. The report talks about using the spatial restrictions of the links to make many "multiple Gbps" links in the same space.
1Gbps is a single link speed.
10Gbps is an aggregate for all links in the data center.[1]
Even $99 low end consumer ethernet switches have an aggregate speed of 16Gbps.
For this to make any sense at all you have to have a switch in the rack aggregating traffic but still be using a 1Gbps ethernet back to a more central switch. The cost of a 10Gbps link isn't too bad when spread over a rack of equipment. Compare that to the cost of an RF system that has to be engineered for the exact physical installation, still needs a >1Gbps uplink port on the rack switch, and silently breaks if someone sets a cardboard box on top of a rack.
[1] Their number, not mine. The report talks about using the spatial restrictions of the links to make many "multiple Gbps" links in the same space.
Even $99 low end consumer ethernet switches have an aggregate speed of 16Gbps.
I'm talking about a Netgear GS108Tv2, just because that what is sitting on my desk at the moment. It claims 16Gbps right there in the brochure. This is a notch above the lower end, it has a management interface, VLANs, QoS, port authentication, and a lot of other features from real switches.
Of course it also claims lifetime warranty but somehow that doesn't work after 90 days, so maybe the 16Gbps is not true either. In a testament to their opinion of their product, Netgear will sell you a warranty that does work for a couple years for only a bit more than the cost of the switch itself.
Of course it also claims lifetime warranty but somehow that doesn't work after 90 days, so maybe the 16Gbps is not true either. In a testament to their opinion of their product, Netgear will sell you a warranty that does work for a couple years for only a bit more than the cost of the switch itself.
Using horn antennas with a nice bronze patina might add some steampunk flare though.
It's interesting, but are bandwidth hotspots so unpredictable that one can't lay a few wires to alleviate them, without adding new hardware?