Move aside twisted-pair Ethernet, it’s time for WiFi to take the network reins Ethernet, the wired networking technology that originated at Xerox PARC over 40 years ago, has always been remarkably solid. In much the same way that WiFi has ruled wireless networking since its inception in 1997, Ethernet has always stayed the course, adopting and refining new technologies as required, but never ever diverging from the path. After all, that is Ethernet’s strength: Without standardization — without various hardware and software providers agreeing on how network data should be handled — the world (or at least the world’s networks) would fall apart. Unfortunately, it now seems those four decades of calm, gradual, standardized updates to Ethernet might finally be coming to a close; there’s a crack in the Ethernet monolith, and ironically it’s all WiFi’s fault. As previously reported, the IEEE is currently working on a new standard that will eventually provide either 400Gbps or 1000Gbps (1Tbps) of bandwidth over fiber-optic or copper cables. A lot of work goes into creating a new standard; it probably won’t be ready for use before 2017. There is a 10-gigabit Ethernet standard, but it requires costly Cat 6a cabling. There are other efforts to try and bring 40GbE and 100GbE over from fiber-optic to copper, but they won’t be ready any time soon — and again, they’ll need very fancy cables. This means, for the time being, most homes and offices — which nearly all use cheap-and-cheerful Cat 5 or Cat 5e cabling — are stuck with 1-gigabit Ethernet. Now, you might think that gigabit Ethernet is fine — and really, for most users, it is. You run into problems, however, when you try to connect lots of users over a single GigE link — for example, when you plug in a 802.11ac WiFi router. As it stands, three-stream 802.11ac routers are already capable of up to 1.3Gbps — more than enough to saturate a GigE connection. Second-gen 802.11ac devices, which could support up to eight streams, are due soon — and obviously they will want a lot more than one gigabit of connectivity to the LAN. To resolve this problem, two separate factions have formed — NBASE-T and MGBASE-T — both offering technology that will push either 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps over Cat 5e cables. Both of these “alliances” are made up of big players — Cisco is heading up NBASE, while Broadcom is over in the MGBASE camp — but neither are ratified by the IEEE. Basically, there’s huge commercial demand for a stop-gap solution — and these guys are rushing to fill the gap. Neither group is promising interoperability with each other, or with the next-gen IEEE standard (whenever it comes along). It actually seems like both alliances plan commercialize their own tech, attempt to popularize it, and then try to get the IEEE to recognize their standard as the winner.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 06:17:13 +0000
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