What is 10GBASE-T Technology
The 10GBASE-T technology is an extension of the earlier 1000BASE-T technology, which operates at 10 Gbit/s over twisted-pair copper cables. The 10GBASE-T technology will allow for faster speeds of up to 10 Gbit/s over a distance of 100 meters. 10GBASE-T technology is the newest of the Ethernet standards, and it was developed to address the limitations of 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX networks. This new Ethernet standard has much higher data rates than its predecessors, which means that it can transmit more data with less latency.
The Arrival of 10GBASE-T Related Switches, NICs
Fiber channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a technology that allows fiber channel storage area network (SAN) to operate through Ethernet, especially 10 Gigabit Ethernet. FCoE itself is not a new technology. At present, the FCoE market is developing rapidly. When FCoE is preliminarily determined, the cabling selection adopted by FCoE users when connecting servers and switches is limited to small SFP + direct cable (DAC). The FCoE application with 10G SFP + DAC is shown in the left part of the figure below.
oday, this limitation has been completely broken. In March 2012, Intel announced the launch of 10GBASE-T Intel Ethernet aggregation network adapter x540-t2, which fully supports FCoE. Cisco lives in San Diego announced the launch of its FCoE enabled hardware product Nexus 5596T 10GBASE-T switch. It is understood that Intel’s X540-T2 and Cisco’s Nexus 5596T are the industry’s first 10GBASE-T network cards and switches that support FCoE. Today, FCoE users have added not only a choice of network type, but also a cabling choice, that is, twisted pair for connecting servers and switches. The arrival of these 10GBASE-T hardware devices is a signal, which means that 10 Gigabit wiring can directly use twisted pairs and new changes will take place in the cabling mode of the data center, and the cabling cost will be reduced accordingly. Importantly, cat6a cabling, which has been debated for many years, is recognized by the market that 10GBASE-T can be truly realized. The conceptual diagram of the 10GBASE-T Ethernet fiber channel is shown on the right in the figure above.
This is indeed a major breakthrough. This technology successfully enables FCoE applications to have all the advantages of 10GBASE-T technology, such as cost-effectiveness, backward compatibility to 1G, and design flexibility in the 100 meter range.
Conclusion
For users who want to use FCoE technology today, they can choose to deploy the cat6a cabling copper solution provided by QSFPTEK, and adopt the special area architecture with great flexibility and strong scalability as the infrastructure. Users who want to use 10g and FCoE in the future can use the same strategy, that is, install category 6A cabling, temporarily run 1g rate, and upgrade to 10g when the time is ripe. This strategy triggered by 10GBASE-T Ethernet fiber channel technology can bring the value of unity, flexibility and scalability to end users, and facilitate users to design, deploy and improve their data center network infrastructure. Are you ready to use the 10GBASE-T Ethernet fiber channel network? If you have any question, welcome to consult QSFPTEK