RE: Hari as 10 Gig Fibre Channel
Roy,
I read your email and as someone who has worked on IEEE 802.3 standards
developments in the past and is looking forward to working on more in the
future, I felt a bit insulted. If you don't like the Hari proposal, that is
fine but don't make non-technical arguments and accusations in hopes of
having it thrown out.
As a system architect and a silicon designer, I like that Hari is being
proposed. I like having standardized interfaces, as it allows me to
partition my design as I see fit. If I should decide to interface to a PMD
device, I would like the PMD to use the same interface protocol as I do.
That may end up being Hari for a LAN PMD or something else for a WAN PMD. I
also like that it is an interface that may see a broad spectrum of
applications (FC, Infiniband, etc.) as this helps to increase the
availability and reduce the cost.
As for Hari, it is just a proposal that's on the table. It may not be the
final solution that we standardize. Anyone designing a product prior to the
standardization of 802.3ae understands that the product may not be standards
compliant. Such was the case with 802.3z, and such will be the case with
802.3ae. There will be companies that are able to show products first,
because they've participated in the standards development and hedged their
bets. The advantage to the HSSG is that will enable a proof of concept and
show the market that 10 GbE is viable. It will also help us develop the
standard, much like the early 802.3z products helped develop the 802.3z
standard.
I would respectfully request that you apologize to those that have made the
Hari proposal.
Sincerely,
Brad Booth
-----Original Message-----
From: Roy Bynum [SMTP:rabynum@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Sunday, November 28, 1999 10:32 PM
To: rtaborek@xxxxxxxxxx; rtaborek@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: HSSG
Subject: Re: Hari as 10 Gig Fibre Channel
Rich,
Perhaps the NCITS TC T11 is the correct forum to standardize on
Hari. Please remove it as a
specific functional standard within P802.3ae. Please make it
possible for the people
working on the PHYs to apply the functional implementations that are
needed for the specific
PHYs. According to the 802.3 model the PHY specific coding occurs
within the PCS, not the
PMD. Applying Hari between the PMA and PMD violates that model!
Hari is only a requirement for those people that decided on the PHY
of choice before the
HSSG got a chance to vote on it/them, and jumped the gun on their
ASICs. As far as I am
concerned those people can implement anything they want, as long as
they do not make it part
of the P802.3ae standard.
Right now several people are upset because I have challenged their
perceived control of the
development of 10GbE. I have brought disorder where they thought
that they had imposed
order, their order. They are correct. I challenged their perceived
view of Ethernet as a
confined protocol, when they did not understand how Data Link
protocols are used and what
makes them functionally different. They did not understand that the
developers of GbE
brought the disorder first by crossing the boundary between confined
LAN application and
unconfined WAN application.
The application of Fiber Channel technology and functionality helped
cause that disorder.
Most FC applications have response timing limitations (100x ms) at
the application level,
which makes most FC implementations Local. Putting Fiber Channel
under applications that do
not have those same response timing limitations removes the Local
only limitation. FC is
designed for campus facilities, using privately owned fiber. The
GbE people incorrectly
thought that they too were making GbE into a Local only protocol.
They did not understand
that the full duplex nature of the original Ethernet, applied
through 100mb 802.3 was what
made it truly Local only. Even the electrical full duplex 100BT can
be used across a long
haul fiber system by putting it into an optical transducer. Full
duplex 100FX has been used
across long distances with wavelength/power transducers. GbE is
taking off as a leased
fiber WAN protocol, without service operations support.
I am not the cause of the disorder here. The people that did not
fully understand the
implications and applications of what they were doing are the cause
of the disorder. Please
do not codify that disorder within P802.3ae.
Thank you,
Roy Bynum