10GBase-T Compliance in Doubt

Claims by Ethernet adapter makers that they comply with the new spec for 10-Gbit/s Ethernet over copper may be premature, warn vendor and standards body sources. And until interoperability tests are completed at the University of New Hampshire's InterOperability lab in April, no one can really claim to support the specs, they add.

Members of the Ethernet Alliance consortium say the UNH plugfest, scheduled for an undisclosed date in April, will be followed by demonstrations at the alliance's booth at the Interop trade show in Las Vegas in May.

Until then, vendors such as Chelsio and Tehuti Networks may want to tone it down where claims of being "first" to support 10GBase-T are concerned, vendor sources say. (See More on 10GBase-T and 10GBase-T Adapters Debut.)

The 10GBase-T spec, ratified by the IEEE last year, requires devices like network interface cards to support links up to 50 meters on standard Category 6 copper cabling, and up to 100 meters on what's called Category 6a, a version of copper cabling augmented with wider diameters and other features to support faster data rates.

But Chelsio does not support those distances, apparently. While the vendor did not respond to queries at press time, their supplier of silicon claims they never intended to support distances like 100 meters."Chelsio is a well-known TOE [TCP/IP offload] player. Their controller burns more power than regular NICs because they ... have more features," says Kamal Dalmia, VP of product marketing at Teranetics, whose transceiver is the basis for both Chelsio's and Tehuti's recently announced adapters. Chelsio never claimed to be interested in extending its 10GBase-T adapters beyond distances inside the data center, he says -- distances such as 100 meters.

What about the compliance claim? "They can say whatever they want about their product," Dalmia maintains.

Another vendor, Solarflare Communications, claims to already support 10GBase-T at all data rates and to offer a reference NIC that will be showcased with a switch from SMC Networks in the first half of this year -- possibly as early as the Interop show. (See SolarFlare, SMC Team.)

Perhaps the UNH tests will help clear the air. In the meantime, other vendors, including Neterion and Teranetics (which has never actually announced its wares) are waiting in the wings with their own product announcements. Interop, apparently, will be a key venue.

All the activity means 10GBase-T equipment could accelerate deployment -- or at least, vendors hope so. "2007 will see a number of different products that will drastically reduce the cost per port from thousands of dollars to $500 to $1,000 per port," insists Russell Stern, president and CEO of Solarflare.This doesn't mean widespread sales of 10GBase-T equipment this year. One expert thinks we'll have to wait until the second half of 2008 for any volume shipments.

"The first generation of 10GBase-T products are burning 10 to 12 watts of power," says Bob Wheeler of the Linley Group consultancy. That kind of consumption will be unacceptable to most users, he says. So while Interop and other confabs will be venues for early 10GBase-T products, we won't see any real adoption until the switch vendors release their second-generation wares. "That will be sometime in the second half of 2008, I'd say," says Linley.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch