RE: 850 nm solutions
Colleagues:
As I understand the policy, the point not discussing absolute prices or
costs in the IEEE is to draw a wider circle than antitrust law might
suggest in order to err on the side of prudence.
Bruce
At 10:03 AM 4/21/00 -0400, Gerhold, Mark wrote:
>I don't have an economics degree, but:
>
>Cost. If you are building a widget, the cost is the cost of manufacturing
>the widget. This always includes the parts cost, usually includes labor,
>and sometimes includes arcane stuff like facilities and overhead.
>
>Price. The price is the selling price, which is driven by market forces as
>much as profit margin.
>
>Unfortunately as a user, you have access to the price, not the cost.
>
>Here's a loophole? Say you are a contractor instead of an end user. Then
>you are building a larger system from multiple widgets, in which case the
>widget is a part cost.
>
>All the world's a supply chain, and one man's price is another's cost.
>
>Mark
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Curt Berg [mailto:cberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 6:03 PM
>To: 'Geoff Thompson'
>Cc: stds-802-3-hssg@xxxxxxxx
>Subject: RE: 850 nm solutions
>
>
>
>Well, "relative cost" is the sellers "relative price", right ?
>We are building most stuff from sand and organic deposits, which are
>governed by local countries laws. However IEEE is an International
>organization, so relative price of sand varies relative to what country
>you are in. So how does this make sense to anyone, to state relative
>cost/price of sand if the context is not known ? Relatively speaking,
>I'm lost ...
>
>-Curt-
>PS. We are a non profit org, so to us isn't cost and price almost the same
>thing!!!
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Geoff Thompson [mailto:gthompso@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 12:52 PM
>To: Jonathan Thatcher
>Cc: 'McCormick, Corey'; stds-802-3-hssg@xxxxxxxx; David Law (E-mail)
>Subject: RE: 850 nm solutions
>
>
>Jonathan-
>
>Even "relative pricing" isn't OK, "Relative cost" is what we are constrained
>to.
>"Pricing" is an artificial structure that includes profit. Therefore
>discussions of pricing have nasty anti-trust implications.
>
>You have found where the fine line is drawn.
>
>Geoff
>
>
>At 12:29 PM 4/20/00 -0700, Jonathan Thatcher wrote:
>
>
>Corey,
>
>We have pretty strict rules about sharing any kind of price information in
>the IEEE. You will see in previous notes "relative pricing." This is okay.
>Absolute pricing is not.
>
>David,
>
>Please get this note deleted off the archive.
>
>Everyone,
>
>Please all references to the enclosed note.
>
>Thank you,
>
>jonathan
>
>Jonathan Thatcher,
>Chair, IEEE 802.3ae (10 Gigabit Ethernet)
>Principal Engineer, World Wide Packets
>PO BOX 141719, Suite B; 12720 E. Nora, Spokane, WA 99214
>509-242-9000 X228; Fax 509-242-9001; jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: McCormick, Corey [ mailto:Corey@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:Corey@xxxxxxxxx> ]
>Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 8:37 AM
>To: stds-802-3-hssg@xxxxxxxx
>Subject: RE: 850 nm solutions
>
>Sure thing. The 0.5M spec is for one of our vendors (proprietary Cisco
>GigaStack) GBIC that uses something akin to the FireWire cable for Single
>GigE or Dual GigE switch-to-switch connections in a single GBIC slot. It is
>not 1000BASE-CX, but at least it is inexpensive and available for
>closet/rack interconnects.
>
>The 1000BASE-CX is supporting longer links but costs almost the same as
>1000BASE-SX GBICs (lack of volume drives the cost up I suspect). However,
>1000BASE-CX is extremely rare in our experience. The majority of our NIC
>vendors (3Com, IBM, Compaq, Alteon), provide almost exclusively SX NICs
>without the benefit of using a GBIC slot, and this has further limited our
>practical choices. The cost of a 1000BASE-SX NIC with a fixed (non-GBIC
>interface) is very near our cost of the SX GBIC as a stand-alone part.
>Today the NIC's are ~$400-600 and the SX-GBICs are ~$250-$550. (We of
>course have a few proprietary NICs @ $1000-$2000 each, but thankfully they
>are the exceptions.) Even obtaining 1000BASE-CX GBICs has been tough, much
>less getting them supported by another vendor's GBIC interface. GBICs can
>be great, but it does not yet share the compatibility level of 10Base AUI,
>or even 100Base MII in our day-to-day lives. Just because the connector
>fits, doesn't mean the link works well...
>
>I suspect that the promise of 1000Base-TX pretty much killed the 1000Base-CX
>market and it's development, but with no TX standard likely for 10G (I will
>trust all you in-the-trenches-EE-types for that insight), the CX option
>should be much more popular I believe. To a large extent I think this will
>depend on cost (again) as we obviously need both ends of the links to
>support the same interface media and they are under different market
>pressures I believe. Cost is always an issue, but packaging on the NIC side
>is much less of a problem that on the switch side.
>
>As market pressure/competition has brought prices down and density up for
>the GigE switches, we are seeing the similar things in that market as well.
>The packaging and cost issues seem to pushing our vendors towards the
>small-footprint connectors which preclude the use of the much larger but
>more convenient and expensive GBIC/SC connector housing. In the
>standalone/pizza-box (1U-5U in height) GigE switches, GBICs are still
>common, but in the Slot-based switching chassis the GBIC interface looks to
>be fading. There are exceptions for dedicated uplink ports where the GBIC's
>flexibility seems to be of prime importance.
>
>If the cost differential for any copper spec 10GigE over the same fiber
>solution is very large, I believe it will be very popular if the distance is
>great enough to cover much of the installed data center topologies. Our
>main data center is ~75M across and we use two central switching locations.
>So, for us 25M will do many of our connections. (~50% I would think)
>
>We have architected our data center clusters around other fairly short
>maximum lengths such as High-Voltage Differential SCSI, Low-Voltage
>Differential SCSI, IBM's SSA Serial Disk architecture, etc... so this would
>be nothing unfamiliar.
>
>Hope this helps,
>
>-Corey
>
> -----Original Message-----
>From: Ed Grivna [ mailto:elg@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:elg@xxxxxxxxxxx> ]
>Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 7:16 AM
>To: stds-802-3-hssg@xxxxxxxx; McCormick, Corey
>Subject: RE: 850 nm solutions
>
>Hi Corey,
>
>could you please clarify the statement below? Where on earth
>does this half-meter length spec for 1000BASE-CX come from?
>Copper GBICs should be good for from 5 to 20 meters at
>gigabit rates.
>
>Regards,
>
>Ed Grivna
>
> > Speaking as a customer, we would likely make use of almost
> > as many 10M links as those > 10M. We currently use GigE
> > links for both servers (1500 MTU and Jumbo) and as connections
> > for distribution switches. We find the 0.5M Copper GBIC's less
> > than useful, but about 35% of our links are <=10M. A low-cost
> > 10-25M Coax would be quite useful as most of our connections in
> > the data centers can utilize this length. The three predominant
> > uses for our 1G connections today are spread fairly evenly
> > about 1/3rd each:
> >
>
> >
> > Corey McCormick
> > CITGO Petroleum
> > corey@xxxxxxxxx
> >