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Index
10G Ethernet Market Trend
As companies use the network to optimize business operations, the need for high bandwidth has grown dramatically. The development of enhanced client/server applications and the emergence of emerging applications integrating voice, data, and video have contributed to this demand. With the improvement of PC hardware and software performance and the expansion of functions, the demand for network load is also increasing. Combined with the expansion of commerce, all of this stimulates an increase in the size and frequency of network usage, often followed by a decrease in network performance. The increasing demand for high-speed switches and routers has resulted in higher bandwidth requirements.
IEEE established a working group responsible for the development of a 10Gb/s Ethernet standard based on structured copper cabling systems. The goal of this standard is to produce 10Gb/s Ethernet products that can run on existing horizontal cabling systems and reach a certain transmission distance.
The application field supported by 10GBase-T Ethernet is the data center. The data center is the primary application environment that supports emerging applications related to data storage and server farms. 10GBase-T has two major competitors – 10GBase fiber, such as 10GBASE-SR, and 10GBase-CX4 technology. The potential advantage of 10GBase-T Ethernet compared to 10GBase fiber is its ability to reduce network costs. Compared with 10GBase-CX4, its advantage lies in the larger physical transmission distance. At present, the physical transmission distance of the 10GBase-CX4 standard is only 15m. Looking back on history, an inevitable trend is that applications used in data centers will eventually go to desktop computers, so it is also very important for the 10GBase-T working group to achieve this goal. of.
10GBase-T Cabling Type
The various types of cabling used as physical layer media based on the 10Gb/s standard will be reviewed below. ISO/IEC cabling standards provide definitions for various types of cabling.
U/UTP defines a balanced twisted pair type in which 4 twisted pairs are surrounded by a cable jacket. F/UTP defines a type of balanced twisted-pair in which an overall foil jacket surrounds all 4 twisted pairs, and the foil jacket is then surrounded by a cable jacket. S/FTP defines a type of balanced twisted pair in which each of the 4 twisted pairs is surrounded by a shield, and then all 4 pairs are surrounded by a shield and cable jacket.
An important cabling goal of the 10GBase-T standard is to be able to run over existing Class E (Category 6) cabling. The current Class E cabling specification must address two major technical gaps. The first is frequency width, and the current E-class wiring specification only stipulates the standard requirement of bandwidth to 250MHz. The second is a standard requirement for alien cable crosstalk, which will also apply to Class F (Category 7) cabling specifications.
The 10GBase-T task group has agreed that 500MHz of bandwidth will be sufficient to achieve 10Gb/s data transfer rates in the channel. The 10GBase-T working group has done a lot of work pointing out that insertion loss and alien cable crosstalk are two of the most important cabling parameters that affect Shannon channel capacity.
Unshielded Class E cabling types are more susceptible to crosstalk coupling from alien cables. Therefore, there are length restrictions on the current E-class U/UTP cabling. The simulation results show that the theoretical physical length is 55m in the worst case.
It should be noted that the cabling industry, through technical cabling standards working groups such as TIA (Telecommunications Industry Association) and ISO (International Organization for Standardization), is developing new “enhanced” Class E specifications that will help define 10Gb /s U/UTP integrated cabling feature with the longest channel length of Ethernet being 100m.
Conclusion
According to the simulation prediction results, the channel length of 10Gb/s Ethernet is expected to reach at least 55m when running in an E-class U/UTP system. Whether the U/UTP channel length can exceed 55m depends on two factors. One is that the performance test value of the transmission parameters should reach 500MHz, and the other is that it depends on the level of DSP compensation applied. The integrated cabling industry believes that these problems will be solved, and the enhanced Category 6 U/UTP integrated cabling system will be able to support 100m 10Gb/s Ethernet applications.
The F/UTP channel simulation results show that the overall alien crosstalk level is very low, which results in enabling it to support 10Gb/s Ethernet applications up to 100m.
Class F (category 7) using an S/FTP integrated wiring system has higher overall transmission performance. The lower level of signal loss and alien crosstalk results in a higher signal-to-noise ratio. Therefore, S/FTP can easily meet the requirement that the maximum channel length of 10Gb/s Ethernet is 100m.
