[Lorenz Redlefsen]

Steve,

I think at the high level, we’re in agreement: 10GBASE-T is ready for mass-deployment today, albeit at a price premium to 1G. When you do an apples-to-apples comparison, I don’t think that price premium is as bad as you make it sound, though.

(I don’t think it’s fair to compare the per-port cost of an el cheapo 10/100/1000 switch with an enterprise-class 10G-capable switch, with redundant power, cooling, etc. It *is* true that there aren’t any el cheapo 10G-capable switches today, so 10G does not compare favorably when you compare “cheapest-to-cheapest”.)

10GbaseT […] PHYs (physical layer chips) […] use a lot of power. So switches can’t be too dense or they will melt.

My employer has been shipping a 48-port 10GBASE-T switch with discrete PHY chips for over a year, so I’m not sure that this is entirely accurate. Yes, it was a challenge to fit all those components into the system — maybe that’s why we’re the only one who has managed to pull it off. 😉

The density limit almost everyone eventually runs into is that you can typically fit only 48 RJ-45 jacks into the front-panel of a 1RU rack-mountable switch. It’s just that we ran into that limit before our competitors… 😉

Shortly […] there will be integrated […] MAC (Media Access Controller) and […] PHY [solutions].

That’s true for NICs, but remember that on switches, the MAC is usually part of the switch chip, while the PHY is an external chip. If history is any guide, that’s likely to remain true for the foreseeable future. Note, for example, that even today’s 1000BASE-T switches still use discrete PHY chips, even though they are multi-port — you usually get 8 10/100/1000 ports per PHY chip these days.

One caveat. FCoE […] requires a certain bit error rate and 10GbaseT does not meet that spec.

My understanding is that both Fibre Channel (FC) and 10GBASE-T require a BER of 10^-12 — which BER spec does 10GBASE-T not meet?

[Lorenz Redlefsen]

(Full disclosure: I work for an Ethernet switch vendor, in the engineering department.)

2. The only rj45 10GbE switch I can find (this one) at nearly 20 grand is close to the entire cost of a reasonable fiber system, installed

There are plenty of “rj45 10GbE” switches shipping in volume today. The keyword to search for is “10GBASE-T” — that’s the standard that defines the PHY layer for 10GbE-over-twisted-pair.

Note that most (but not all — check your vendor’s datasheet carefully!!) 10GBASE-T switches allow their ports to run at multiple speeds, using autonegotiation to figure out what speed to run at, i.e., 10G / 1G (and some even support 10G / 1G / 100Mbps — again, double-check!). If you’re interested in consolidating your network infrastructure and connecting hosts running at different speeds to the same switch, 10GBASE-T might be a good option.

On the other hand, there are non-10GBASE-T copper options out there that might be less expensive than fiber, at lengths of up to about 7m. These are mostly interesting for connecting rack-mounted servers to nearby (e.g., top-of-rack) switches. They are pre-terminated “TwinAx” cables that use SFP+ connectors at both ends.

There’s no IEEE standard for this media type — my employer calls it “10GBASE-CR”.

You’ll need a switch that supports SFP+ ports and 10GBASE-CR in order for this to be an option. The nice thing about a switch with SFP+ ports is that you can mix-and-match media types (long-reach fiber, short-reach fiber, passive copper, …).

Some (but not all — again, check your vendor’s datasheet!) SFP+ switches support 10G and/or 1G SFP modules, so here, too, you could consolidate your older 1G equipment into the same switch.