Whither 10-Gig Ethernet?
by Ken Percy and Ed Mier

Published August 2002

 

Abstract:

 

The vendors of 10-Gigabit Ethernet have come under scrutiny lately concerning their products and plans. Given their many and varied claims, Miercom tried to determine how far this product set had progressed via a survey of Ethernet switch vendors in June 2002.

 

More than 20 Layer-2 and/or Layer-3 switch vendors agreed to review our email survey questionnaire, which asked about current and near-term plans as well as the impact and direction of 10-Gigabit Ethernet technology. By the deadline for responses, we had received completed questionnaires from 10 of them. Respondents were offered the option of anonymity, which some accepted. Those who agreed to be identified included Avaya, Extreme Networks, Force10 Networks, Foundry Networks, Juniper Networks and Riverstone Networks.

 

Among the major findings:

 

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The first wave of 10-Gigabit Ethernet Physical Interfaces (PHYs) support predominantly 10GigE LAN rather than WAN interfaces.
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Half the respondents claimed to be shipping 10GigE products as of June, and all expect to have products fielded by mid-2003.
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Among the Ethernet features that will be fully ported to 10GigE products are universal support for 802.1 p/q-based VLAN tagging and DiffServ-based QOS.
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The respondents have a relatively glum short-term sales outlook.
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Delayed finalization of the 10GigE standard (IEEE 802.3ae) was not cited as a major obstacle to progress. Instead, cost was nearly universally cited as the primary barrier to quicker 10GigE availability and rollout.

 

About the authors:

Ken Percy is a technology analyst and Ed Mier is the founder at Miercom, a network consultancy and product test center based in Princeton Junction, NJ.

 

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