The evolution that will start the revolution

You’ve heard it all before, evolutionary technology versus revolutionary technology. Everyone wants their newest technology to be revolutionary – expecting it to be life changing and a wide-sweeping, compelling reason to spend tons of money. This is rarely the case and more often than not marketing fluff to try and get you onto the next big thing. Occasionally we get such an unassuming technology announcement that fits squarely in the ‘no big deal’ from a speeds and feeds perspective that it’s easy to overlook. This is clearly the case with the recent multigigabit announcements from Cisco during Cisco Live, Milan. Multigigabit is a technology that allows your existing cabling to support speeds in excess of 1G, without having to make the jump all the way to significantly more costly 10G. Since we already have technology that address speeds and feeds above what we’re talking about here (how many 10G uplinks have you deployed recently?), it’s easy to overlook the impact this will bring to our daily lives. The ability to move to 2.5G and 5G link speeds without having to make the jump all the way to 10G will allow us to get improved link speeds without having to pay a premium for them. The expected cost increase is estimated to be anywhere from 0% to 15% according to the rumor mill which makes the 250% to 500% speed bump quite attractive!

802.11ac wave 2
The reason I’m taking about it is the fact that this brings with it the promise of addressing the 1G bottleneck that people have been gnashing their teeth over in the wireless space for the past couple of years. While we’ve been able to reasonably deflect the speeds and feeds conversation with 802.11ac wave 1 (speeds approaching 1G wired requirements), there has been no good way to move past that without having a two-cable conversation. The assumption up till now has been that 2x 1G links will be the way forward and many people have been running two copper runs out to their Access Points for the past several years in anticipation of this approach. 802.11ac wave 2 will undoubtedly break the 1G barrier in fairly short order with speeds being promised of (best case) 6,930Mbps PHY rate (about 4,900Mbps on the wire). Multigigabit solutions will allow us to address these concerns without having to invest in 10G links. Better yet, it will allow us to address these concerns without having to consume two 1G ports on our switches. Regardless of the solution you choose (1x 10G or 2x 1G), the cost for deploying a single Multigigabit link supporting up to 5G will be less at scale.

Power
The other unassuming byproduct of this conversation is that Access Points require power to bring up all of those components. It will be nearly impossible to power up a 10G ethernet interface in an AP in the power budgets that we have today. By reducing the link speed requirements to 5G, we can save power at the edge device and still fit in modern negotiation. Multigigabit solutions today will provide PoE, PoE+, and UPoE to ensure that the wave 2 APs that we’re going to be hanging will have ample power for whatever they’re going to bring.

The Revolution
I predict that the incremental cost and intermediary speeds will allow us to start having conversations about the jump to 10G. Multigigabit solutions on Access Points, switch uplinks, and desktop and server nics will be the next big thing. Stackable solutions today promise backwards compatibility so you don’t have to rip and replace – just add a stack member and you’re good to go in that closet/IDF! Regardless of your future proofing plans, enabling faster wireless, or just ensuring that you’re not spending money after (can you believe it?) now legacy 1G infrastructure, make sure you’re having a conversation today about ethernet to bridge the gap to 10G.

For more information about the NBASE-T alliance, go here.
For the Cisco Live, Milan – Tech Field Day Extra event with Peter Jones, go here.