/. Terabit Ethernet is Dead, for Now

Thu Sep 27 13:35:44 UTC 2012

On Sep 27, 2012, at 9:26 AM, jim deleskie <deleskie at gmail.com> wrote:

>  That problem IMO will only be worse with a 4x speed multiplier over
> 100G what premium will anyone be willing to spend to have a single
> 400G pipe over 4 bonded 100G pipes?

When you consider that 10GE is less than 10X  the price of Gig-E, which is less than 10X the price of Fast-E (Slow-E by today's standards?) ... The economics don't really make sense that 40GE > 4 * 10GE, and 100GE > 10X 10GE ...

The manufacturers are probably shooting themselves in the foot here, because for anyone who does not need anything faster than 10GE (which represents many ISP's, enterprises, etc), they would consider 40/100GE if it were cheap enough to have a nice luxury, but not if they are paying a huge premium.  This translates into fewer overall sales, which translates into the product becoming "niche", and the parts ending up more expensive for those who do need it (Tier 1 ISP's, CDN's, Large Tier 2's, Exchanges, etc).  As we all know, margins in many of those types of businesses are not huge in the first place, translating to an even smaller demand for that technology. That smaller demand ultimately translates to fewer dollars available for developing the next generation. The market doesn't just need faster interlinks, it needs them to be cheaper (per-bit), too!

-Phil