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Mark
et al. (with the et al. being those who have also provided their thoughts): Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this matter. I won’t be on a boat, plane or train but most likely in an automobile (full disclosure – actually a truck) when P802.3bs considers this important vote. In general, those who know and work with me also know that I am a great supporter of keeping things simple. In that regard, may I re-iterate something that
I shared with Kent Lusted some time ago in this context (with apologies to William Shakespeare):
I come to bury Roman numerals, not to praise them. The evil that nomenclatures do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Roman numerals.” To that end, I would encourage the P802.3bs Task Force to adopt the Arabic nomenclature. In my humble opinion, “it just makes sense” to transition to a more
generally and universally understood system – especially one that doesn’t suffer from a dearth of vowels
J Back-to-back English consonants become just a bit of a challenge in conversation, especially
when you have three or more in a row! Safe travels to all and best regards, The 802.3bs Task Force will be handling it’s motions this week on Friday. Unfortunately many may miss this due to travel constraints – myself included. I therefore thought I’d use the reflector to share my thoughts around nomenclature as the group looks to adopt their 200GbE SMF baselines. This topic keeps
coming up as many appear to be frustrated with the continuing use of Roman numerals nomenclature for the AUI and MII interfaces. While the simplistic use of Roman numerals for 10GbE (XAUI) and 100GbE (CAUI) were somewhat easy to understand and say, we saw that with 25GbE it was unwieldy
and when looking ahead at 200 GbE and beyond (800, 1000, 1600 … it wouldn’t get any better). Therefore 802.3by switched back to the arabic nomenclature for the 25 GbE standard. The joint meeting of the 50G/NGOATH and the 200GbE SMF Study groups in Macau considered the topic and a straw poll there was overwhelmingly in favor of using
Arabic nomenclature. Obviously this is non-binding, so this week the 802.3cd group followed through with adopting its nomenclature that included the arabic usage for the AUI and MII interfaces (and of course for the PMDs etc). A lot of the discussion during
the TF meeting centered around the challenges with talking to customers, press etc to explain things to those not fully steeped into the depths of 802.3 specification writing. The motion result was Y:65 N:9 A:13. I’m hoping that the 802.3bs Task force will also follow through in a similar manner when they make their decisions on adopting 200 GbE baselines and be sure to
consider the clear direction from the SG that generated the work. Since I won’t be there tomorrow for the discussion, I wanted to share my thoughts and allow others to respond in case they may also be missing the discussion
on Friday. Regards…Mark |