100 Gigabit Ethernet is Here!
Introduction
Ethernet technology has come a long way since its humble beginning in 1973 at Xerox PARC. With each subsequent iteration, there has been a lag between time of standardization and large scale adoption. The latest iteration, dubbed 802.3ba by the IEEE Higher Speed Study Group (HSSG), was ratified in June, 2010 and follows this same pattern but with a slight twist. For the first time in Ethernet history a single standard defines two separate speeds; 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) as well as 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GbE).
Figure 1: Original Ethernet Sketch
The technical challenges facing 100GbE have been significant; ranging from developing a whole new generation of optics that can handle 4 lanes of 25Gbps, to simply dealing with normal router and switch functions such as packet inspection, queuing, lookups, filtering and table updates, all in one-tenth the amount of time as with 10GbE. And of course this all has to be done with complete backwards compatibility and meeting all expectations with respect to bit error rate, latency, jitter and the like. As expected 40GbE gained some level of market acceptance first, but some 5 years after ratification the time for 100 Gigabit Ethernet is now!
This whitepaper will discuss the evolution of 100GbE technology in the service provider and data center markets and provide insights in to how network application acceleration hardware can be leveraged to maximize performance and efficiency in emerging 100GbE network appliances.