Last
week was a busy week for the Ethernet
Alliance.
On
September 15 they held a one-day “Technology Exploration Forum” to focus on
higher-speed Ethernet – Life Beyond IEEE P802.3ba. By all measures, the event was a great success -
attendance was much higher than predicted, the room was packed all day, and the
discussions were lively and engaged.
The high points of the session for me were the end-user presentations:
·
Bikash Kooley (Google) on 100GbE and beyond for data center connectivity;
·
Arien Vijin (Amsterdam Internet Exchange) on 100GbE and beyond
from an end user perspective;
·
Mike Bennett (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) on how higher
speed Ethernet could be sensitive to energy efficiency; and
·
Donn Lee (Facebook) on how their data center could use 100GbE
right now – hokey video here.
(Update) A
complete listing of the agenda and the presentations are available here.
And then on
September 16, the Ethernet Alliance held their annual members meeting in the
Founders Theater at NetApp’s Sunnyvale corporate headquarters. The high point for this meeting was
undoubtedly the excellent presentation by Seamus
Crehan of the Dell'Oro Group on the
state of Ethernet.
This
is the best analyst presentation I’ve seen in a long time: a thoughtful and
rigorous analysis by an extremely knowledgeable person, with detailed Ethernet
infrastructure product knowledge, and a thorough understanding of how new
technologies enter the market. His
thoughts on 10GbE (now in the mainstream, with perhaps 2million ports expected
to be shipped in 2009 -- pulled by on-board 10GBE server ports and the
imminence of higher-speed (40/100Gb) standards) and on FCoE deployment were
particularly enlightening. I’m
hoping the EA will post his presentation to their website…
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