Provocative KISSES: The case for Serial Ethernet etc.

[Paul Gunning <paulg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I	"KISS" = "Keep it serial, Sir"
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*	Any thoughts on

	http://www.bell-labs.com/news/1999/may/11/1.html

	...and...

	http://www.bell-labs.com/news/1999/may/10/1.html
	

							?

*	I recall overheads from HP that depicted serial, 12.5Gbit/s 
VCSEL modulation that were presented as long ago as 1997 
during the 8th Annual Workshop on Interconnections within 
High-Speed Digital Systems, May 11-14 1997, Santa Fe, NM. 

	http://soliton.ucsd.edu/ihsds/santafe97/#program
	
The talk was:

"High Speed Parallel Optical Interconnects - Preparing For The Tera
Era", 
by Waguih Ishak, Hewlett Packard Laboratoratories, Palo Alto, CA 

The work, as I recall, was performed by Ian White:

	http://www.fen.bris.ac.uk/elec/people/ihw.html

and his group at the University of Bristol, UK:

	http://www.fen.bris.ac.uk/elec/research/ccr/opto/opto_3c.html

and must be very nearly three years old by now. Wouldn't such devices 
admit 8B/10B coding for 1x10GBe? 


*	Recently Siemens described a 1570km 1xGBe link over installed 
optical fibre at 1550nm:

	http://www.usa.siemens.com/news_and_press/pressreleases/icn_990222b.htm

Surely a long distance solution is approriate within the 1x10GBe
standard?


*	Aren't non-serial 10GBe solutions akin to non-standard 
	Cisco Etherchannel: 

	http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/cisco/mkt/switch/fec/index.shtml

									?

Surely the progression of the Ethernet standard: 1x10Mbit/s ->
1x100MBit/s -> 
1x1Gbit/s -> 1x10Gbit/s -> 1x100Gbit/s -> 1x1Tbit/s is elegant? 


							

II	"KISS" = "Keep it simple, Sir"
--------------------------------------

*	Choices motivated by simplicity and elegance for the 1x10GBe 
standard will have a very profound influence on 1x100GBe, 1xTBe... 

To this end don't dismiss or exclude the possibility of all-optical 
routing and switching for 1x100GBe and 1xTBe. 

*	My colleague, Julian Lucek, speaks of the "4th Quadrant":

	http://www.labs.bt.com/people/lucekjk/4thquad.htm

which describes the benefits of Optical _DIGITAL_ Processing.
This is will not have a role for 1x10GBe, but might it be useful
for 1x100GBe? 1x1TBe?




III	"KISS" = "Keep In-mind Simplified Structure"
----------------------------------------------------

*	IP-over-Optics is the flavour of the month. Intervening 
layers i.e. SDH/SONET, ATM are being retired in favour of simplicity. 
Could Ethernet framing provide a "glue-layer" between IP and Optics 
at 1x10GBe...1x100Gbe...1xTBe...and beyond? 

I'd appreciate your criticism of the above.
	
Paul.
-- 
Paul Gunning
Futures Lab
BT Laboratories

Phone:	+44 1473 647049
Fax:	+44 1473 646885