IEEE 40GE & 100GE

Thu Dec 13 05:31:17 UTC 2007

On Wed, 12 Dec 2007, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:

> Link budget information on page 4, here:
> http://www.ieee802.org/3/hssg/public/reach/Matsumoto_r1_1207.pdf
> Relative cost estimates on page 5.

(totally disregarding the HSSG policy of talking cost and not price here)

If the cost estimate has any bearing on actual end-user purchase price, 
then I would say that the 3-4km reach alternative makes sense. Having a 
10km reach alternative costing 60% of 40km reach optics just doesn't make 
sense. Today we live in a world where 10km reach optics is ~1/4 the price 
of 40-80km optics, what's being said in that table is that the 40km reach 
optics cost 2.1x of the 3km one. The 40km optics would cost 1.6x the 10km 
one.

Since cost of keeping spares and considering the operational expense of 
bringing up links with beforementioned bad connectors etc, it might even 
be rational to just go with 40km optics at this cost difference level.

Different optics variants need to have a distinct price difference, 
otherwise they're just complicating things. Otoh if we need attenuators 
for 40km optics on 5km links then that's a complicating factor as well. 
That's not been needed before.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se