The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) established the Single Pair Ethernet Consortium (SPEC) to accelerate the adoption of next-generation operational technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity. Founding members of SPEC include Belden, CommScope, Panduit and the Siemon Company. SPEC will provide vendor-neutral representation for technology leaders and users across the building automation technology ecosystem.
As organizations increase the amount of data processing they do each day, some are starting to require hyperscale data centers. With the use of fiber optics and growing Ethernet standards, admins can make 100G data centers a reality. Leaf-spine topologies, Ethernet and optics research are driving the next generation of data center networking infrastructure. Stay ahead of the curve with these technologies.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is at the beginning of its golden age. Forecasts note that the number of connected devices could exceed the 20-billion mark by next year and could reach 50 billion by 2022. For all this, we are basically using just one network protocol. The still-dominant IPv4 standard uses 32-bit addresses, only making around 232, or 4.3 billion different addresses possible. Luckily, a new 128-bit format has existed in principle since 1998. This IPv6 standard offers an address space of 2128, or around 340 sextillions, eliminating any concerns
5G enabled devices in the IoT will allow huge numbers of sensors and devices to gather incredible amounts of data and transmit the data at remarkable speeds over wide distances. We are going to see a new wave of information enabled in government and industry. Instead of your phone or laptop acting as the processor, it will sit inside the edge of the 5G infrastructure. This will allow things like driverless vehicles and telemedicine.5G will provide the digital infrastructure that will shape the quality of life of most of the earth’s population. Yes, it will load web pages and play videos on your phone 10 to 20 times faster than 4G. Mobile devices will spend less time processing data, which will consume less power, which will result in extended battery life. But these are little advances compared to what is possible.
Let’s say you’re in charge of a data center and your boss reminds you that streaming video and IoT devices are all the rage and if you don’t keep up with bandwidth demand, you’re toast. You have 10G links that use 10G SFP+ SR transceivers at the aggregation layer. You upgrade your switches or linecards to ones that have 40G QSFP ports like the Nexus series switches.You now have a couple of choices for the QSFP ports: You could use QSFP SR4 transceivers, which requires ribbon fiber. That means you’d have to install more trunk fiber and modify patch panels to handle the MPO (Multi-Fiber Push On) connectors. Or you could use the QSFP BiDi transceiver, which, by the way, costs less than the SR4 transceiver. All you have to do is unplug the dual fiber MMF (Multi-Mode Fiber) cable that you already have in place, and plug it right into the BiDi. No hassle. Boss happy. Seems obvious, doesn’t it?
The 400GE BiDi MSA Group founded in July focuses on promoting interoperable 400GE optical specifications that utilize multi-mode fiber (MMF) for applications up to 100m link distances. The MSA leverages BiDi technology that has been widely deployed by Cisco and others for 40GE and 100GE applications over duplex MMF. With the arrival of 400GE applications, customers will finally have no choice but to start using MMF transceivers that require more than duplex fiber. 400GE ports can be used to aggregate traffic from 100GE ports, still leveraging the duplex MMF from 100GE BiDi modules to 400GE modules in a breakout configuration as shown in the diagram below.
In 2017, the IEEE-SA Standards Board approved IEEE Standard 802.3bs. This resulted in the official launch of 400 Gigabit Ethernet. In theoretical terms, it is the advancement from 100G Ethernet and can operate four times faster than 100G. Not only is this, but it also offers a denser configuration and a better economy of scale. Unlike 100G transceiver modules, the 400G transceivers come with 8 channels and utilize PAM4 encoding to accomplish 50Gbps per channel.
VIAVI is introducing new solutions at ECOC including: The T-BERD/MTS 400G Network Tester, which provides rate integration spanning from 400GE down to T1/E1 in addition to fiber optic testing using OTDRs and WD Channel Checkers along with interfaces such as QSFP-DD and SFP-DD. The MAP-300 photonic metrology and test automation platform delivers the precision required for laboratory testing, combined with configurability to meet the demands of the manufacturing process. Remote automation functionality, along with multi-user architecture, helps increase capital utilization and dramatically reduce the cost of testing.The modular OTU-8000 Optical Test Unit with a tunable DWDM OTDR and the ultra-compact OTU-5000 rack-mounted OTDR supports rapid, automatic identification of fiber events such as bends, crushes, breaks and malicious tapping. A single optical test head can test hundreds of fiber links, and auto reports the GPS location of a fault within minutes, dramatically reducing the time and cost of construction and repair.
A new study from Greenpeace and North China Electric Power University reports that in five years, China’s data centers alone will consume as much power as the total amount used in Australia in 2018. The industry’s electricity consumption is set to increase by 66% over that time. Buildings storing data produced 99 million metric tons of carbon last year in China, the study finds, which is equivalent to 21 million cars.
If you’re like most people in the data center market, you’re in the planning stages of converting to 100G links, or you’ve already started the installation process. Either way (and whether you like it or not), that means it’s time to start thinking about 400G.But what’s the best path forward to 100 and 400G? What cabling choices should you make today so you can cost effectively migrate in the future? Nexans can help you make those decision with our Own the Link Calculator web tool, recently updated for 400G.
