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(C) Herbert Haas
2005/03/11
10 Gigabit Ethernet / IEEE 802.3ae
Only optical support
850nm (MM) / 1310nm /1550 nm (SM only)
No copper PHY anymore !
Different implementations at the
moment – standardization not finished!
8B/10B (IBM), SONET/SDH support, …
XAUI ("Zowie") instead of GMII
10 GE only supports optical links. Note that GE is actually a synchronous
protocol! There is no statistical multiplexing done at the physical layer anymore,
because optical switching at that bit rate only allows synchronous transmissions.
The GMII has been replaced (or enhanced) by the so-called XAUI, known as
"Zowie".
Note: At the time of writing this module, the 10 GE standard was not fully
finished. Though, some vendors already offer 10 GE interface cards for their
switches.
These interfaces are very expensive but the investment ensures backward
compatibility to lower Ethernet rates and at the same time provides a very high
speed WAN interface.
An alternative technology would be OC192, which requires a very expensive and
complex SONET/SDH environment.