100G Ethernet and beyond: preparing for the exabyte Internet
TechWatch has just published a report on the future of Ethernet, 100G Ethernet and beyond, which explains the background and technical development to the next upgrade of the thirty-year-old family of networking standards, which will be formalised in 2010.
The key thing is that, traditionally, Ethernet has developed in incremental steps of ten. This means that the next step should be from 10G (the current standard) to 100G and indeed, JANET recently undertook a trial of some of the technology that will be used in 100G networking. However, there has been a lack of consensus over whether to move to 100G or a less ambitious target of 40G. The report reviews these debates and explains why the next IEEE standard will be for both 40G and 100G.
As far as institutions are concerned, larger universities and major research centres are likely to be the first to face these questions and there is a lot of money at stake: a typical 224-port switch with 10G on every port is of the order of £250,000 (and of course they’re not bought singly). Newer equipment with 40G or 100G is likely to be more and early adopters often pay over the odds for being at the cutting edge. Taken together with the buying cycles of academia, the message is that network managers have to look ahead to what the demands on the network are likely to be over the next three to five years and plan for the likely levels of traffic in the distribution and core network equipment, allowing for depreciation, in accounting terms, and suitable levels of return on investment.
The TechWatch report explains why there does not appear to be a consensus for a single target and looks at the implications that may have for network managers in HE, particularly in light of JANET’s recent announcement of trials into 100G transmission. It also looks ahead to the development of terabit Ethernet and predicts a period of ‘chaotic’ development before the standards bodies catch up with the new technologies that will inevitably emerge to fill the gap between 100G and 1T Ethernet (the next increment of ten). All this will happen in the context of re-engineering the basic architecture of the Internet and the report argues that layers 1 and 2 of the Internet, which Ethernet handles, will need to be ‘re-virtualised’ to take account of this.
RFID and the Right to Silence
The European Commission has issued an action plan concerning the use, and possible abuse, of RFID, smart chips and other aspects of what is becoming known as the Internet of Things.
The report, “Internet of Things – an action plan for Europe”, proposes 14 action points, including work on the policy governance of RFID, continuous monitoring of the privacy and data security issues arising, action over the recycling of the potentially vast number of smart chips and cards, and pan-European standards work.
Most interestingly, the EU will launch a debate over what it terms the ‘Right to Silence of the Chips’ – empowering individuals to be able to disconnected from the emerging networked infrastructure at any time.
Although this may seem of tangential interest to higher education, university libraries are among the early adopters of this new technology. There is also likely to be considerable uptake of smart card-related technologies for the identification of staff and students and for building security.
Indeed, JISC TechWatch published a report on RFID in May 2006 which discussed these emerging developments and put them into an education context. The TechWatch report discussed privacy concerns in depth, pointing out that as individuals move around in a society of widespread tagging the products they buy, wear and consume, as well as the places they visit, will be capable of being identified and recorded by a widespread network of readers. Such information could provide a great deal of intelligence on a person, their habits, likes and dislikes and movements.
TechWatch concluded that the benefits of these technologies would only be properly realised if they can be trusted. The EU report backs this view and argues for a widespread debate over the issues and for the ultimate development of an Internet of Things for people rather than for technology’s own sake.