Arrival of 10GBASE-T
In 2003, TIA began to study copper cables that can support 10 Gigabit rate transmission and issued the performance parameter standard of category 6A cabling products in 2008. At the same time, it also laid the foundation for the application of category 6a and 7 horizontal twisted pairs in 10 Gigabit Ethernet. However, since the promulgation of the 10G copper cable standard, the cost of copper equipment and high energy consumption has led to the slow promotion of the 10G copper network, and once almost disappeared because of the slogan of “light in copper out”. With the successful development of the 40nm 10G Ethernet chip, the cost of a 10G network card and 10G copper port switch has been greatly reduced, and the 10G copper network has regained its advantages.
2013-2015 is a great development year of 10G. In the past 2012, more than 20 kinds of switches and servers based on 10 Gigabit Ethernet chips were launched into the market, broadening the market share of 10 Gigabit network equipment. In addition, 2.7 million 10 Gigabit ports have been put into use, while this data was only 182000 in 2011. 10GBASE-T is expected to dominate the market in 2014, but the advantages of optical cable in transmission rate will continue to occupy a leading position in 40G and 100G markets.
Advantages of 10GBASE-T Over Copper Twisted Pair
When the IEEE 802.3 standard was issued in 2006, the power consumption of 10GBASE-T equipment decreased significantly. The earliest 10 Gigabit chip adopts 130nm production technology, and the power consumption of each port is 10W. The 40nm device makes the power consumption of each port less than 4W. The power consumption of 28nm devices in the future is only 2.5W.
In addition to the technical advantages, twisted pair transmission can also use some transmission standards to reduce power consumption. There is still room for network equipment to improve efficiency, especially if the network equipment does not work for a period of time. WOL is a new network standard that deals specifically with the power consumption of devices in sleep mode. In the sleep mode, the server will switch to the low-efficiency state to reduce power consumption until a “data packet” is received, which will wake the server from the sleep state, and the server will switch back to the normal mode.
Because WOL technology is suitable for servers that are not working for a long time, such as at night and other long-term periods. Even the most active data centers will have low utilization. WOL is an important strategy in 10GBASE-T, especially for data center energy saving. However, 10Gbps optical fiber Ethernet does not support WOL protocol, so the optical fiber system cannot effectively control power. The following figure shows the comparison between the equipment, transmission medium, and annual maintenance cost of 10GBASE-T in the data center and the cost of corresponding optical products. The most economical way to 10Gbps is cat 6A unshielded twisted pair, cat 6A f / UTP shielded twisted pair, cat 7A s / ftp shielded twisted pair. It can also be seen from the figure below that the twisted pair scheme has absolute advantages in cost compared with other media.
Conclusion
In the application of 10GBASE-T 10 Gigabit Ethernet, compared with 10g SFP + DAC high-speed cable, 10 Gigabit copper cable (i.e. Cat 6 and above network cable) not only has long transmission distance and low wiring cost but also can be used in combination with the existing copper structured cabling system, providing higher flexibility for network deployment. QSFPTEK provides high-performance 10GBASE-T transceivers at a low price. Welcome to consult via sales@qsfptek.com.
