Ethernet Alliance White Papers


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Ethernet Overviews                                                                                                      

The Ethernet Ecosystem - Jan. 06

Due to Ethernet's proven low implementation cost, its known reliability, and relative simplicity of installation and maintenance, its popularity has grown to the point that today nearly all traffic on the Internet starts or ends on an Ethernet connection.

Introduction to TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) - April 02

Deployment of TCP/IP offload in conjunction with high-speed Ethernet technologies enables applications to take full advantage of the networking capabilities. This paper describes TOE technology and various implementations, and discusses TOE challenges and applications.

10 Gigabit Ethernet                                                                                                         

10GBASE-T: 10Gigabit Ethernet over Twisted-pair Copper - Aug. 07

This white paper addresses three key topics about 10GBASE-T: the reason for 10GBASE-T, including a description of some 10GBASE-T applications; how it works, which explores the fundamental technology; and how you use it, which explains cabling and field-testing issues.

Ethernet Alliance Members Interoperability Demonstration of 10GBASE-LRM Optical Interfaces - Jan. 07

Ethernet Alliance members were required to bring at least one 10GBASE-LRM compliant module and their own module evaluation board to demonstrate successful multi-vendor interoperability testing of 10GBASE-LRM optical interfaces in support of the IEEE P802.aq draft standard.Building For Bandwidth

This white paper demonstrates how to choose the right cabling infrastructure for 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE)

Moving 10 Gigabit Ethernet into a Volume Platform - Feb. 06

Two challenges exist as 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) is extended beyond its initial role. Achieving 10Gbps on copper unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cabling, and meeting the application's requirements for low power is also needed for 10GBASE-T to meet its full potential.

Optical Fiber and 10 Gigabit Ethernet - May 02

As 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) is introduced into networks the physical limitations and properties of optical fiber introduce new challenges for a network designer. This paper provides an introduction to the world of optical fiber and covers the unique network design issues that 10GbE introduces into an optical fiber network.

10 Gigabit Ethernet Technology Overview - May 02

This white paper provides a look at the IEEE 802.3ae project as well as a brief overview of the 10GbE technology. It follows with information about the 10GEA's largest interoperability demo as well as 10GbE in the market place. The paper concludes with additional detail of the 10GbE technology, such as electrical and optical components.

XAUI: An Overview - Mar. 02

This white paper is designed to provide a general overview of XAUI (pronounced "zowie"), which is part of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard. Details of the technology are found in clauses 47 and 48 of the 10 Gb Ethernet standard (IEEE Std 802.3ae).

40/100G                                                                                                                     

CEI-28G: Paving the Way for 100 Gigabit - March 09

While the first generation of devices supporting 100 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) will utilize a 10 lane by 10 Gb/s signaling rate, future power and size reduction requirements will drive the need for a faster, narrower interface. Noting these future needs, the Optical Internetworking Forum has initiated development of standards for the next generation of electrical signaling for long reach and short reach applications.

This paper provides an overview of the CEI-28G project, which defines electrical specifications for 28 Gbaud/s signaling for next generation chip-to-chip and chip-to-module applications that support transmission of 100 Gb/s data rates, such as 100 Gigabit Ethernet and OTU4. 

Road to 100G: Facing the Challenges of Developing 100 Gbps Platforms - May 08

This paper will address the challenges of scaling packet networks from the current state-of-the-art, 10 Gbps limited packet-aware, to next generation 100 Gbps all packet-aware, any-to-any networks. The areas covered will include optical/electrical interfaces, interface adaptation, data plane processing, control plane processing, as well as switching, system power and printed circuit board requirements. These challenges apply to platforms that aggregate lower speed interfaces, up to 100 Gbps, as well as platforms with pure 100 Gbps interfaces.

40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet Technology Overview - Nov. 08

The IEEE P802.3ba 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s Ethernet Task Force has been working on the development of 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet. In October 2008, the Task Force took a major step forward, as it generated Draft 1.0 of the amendment to the IEEE Std 802.3TM- 2008 Ethernet standard. The Task Force has developed a single architecture capable of supporting both 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet, while producing physical layer specifications for communication across backplanes, copper cabling, multi-mode gigabit per second, and single-mode gigabit per second. This white paper provides an overview of the 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet project and the underlying technologies.

Overview of Requirements and Applications for 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit Ethernet - Aug. 07

Service providers have become increasingly challenged to accommodate customer requests for services; 100GbE is the indentified solution for providing the next generation of internet connectivity to continue to fuel the delivery of new services and content to the consumer and business customers.

Carrier/Service Provider                                                                                           

The wide adoption of 1G Ethernet passive optical networks (EPON) (per IEEE std P802.3ahTM) provided a significant jump in access network capacity and created demand for greater bandwidth-intensive applications and services such as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), Video-on-Demand (VoD) and high-grade internet protocol (IP) telephony known as Voice over IP (VoIP). To address these market demands, the IEEE P802.3av Task Force was created in September 2006 and its 10G-EPON draft builds upon the compatibility with the existing 1GEPON.

Provider Backbone Transport Overview - Dec. 07

This paper discusses a new technology called Provider Backbone Transport (PBT) which can be employed within the service provider domain of a Provider Backbone Bridged Network (PBBN) to allow configuration of resilient, traffic engineered, SLA driven, point-to-point Ethernet trunks facilitating guaranteed QoS.

Overcoming the obstacle of the last mile - the connection between an Internet service provider and a business or home - has been the elusive, final frontier. Ethernet has emerged as the frontrunner for transporting broadband Internet protocol transmissions.

Ethernet - The Next Generation WAN Transport Technology - May 02

The LAN, MAN, and WAN are now united under a single medium, Ethernet. This paper describes the technical details, and explains how carriers can now take advantage of Ethernet as a transport for their network backbone and their service media.

10 Gigabit Ethernet Interconnection with Wide Area Networks - Mar. 02

With the advent of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, the commonality of line rates between OC-192 SONET and 10GE has opened up the opportunity to simplify the interface. This paper describes how 10GE nodes can easily interconnect with OC192 SONET networks without leaving the Ethernet cost model behind.

Data Center Ethernet Topics including Data Center Bridging (DCB), iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

SC09:  Ethernet THE Converged Network- November 09

Continuous reduction of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is the ultimate goal for building next generation data center networks. Key technology transitions applicable to future data centers are network convergence and virtualization. The Ethernet Alliance multi-vendor, multi-technology showcase demonstrates a proof-of-concept converged network based on 10GbE showing its ability to provide high performance networking for various traffic types, including LAN, SAN and IPC traffic. This showcase highlights how network convergence takes advantage of high speed Ethernet to deliver client messaging, storage, and server application communications over a unified network while maintaining the same level of high performance delivered in separate networks. In addition data center interconnect technologies such as 10GBASE-T and SFP+ 10GbE Direct Attach Cables will be demonstrated.

iWARP Brings Low-Latency Fabric Technology to Ethernet- November 09

In November 2009, the Ethernet Alliance announced a focused group effort inside the Ethernet in the Data Center subcommittee to support market development for the iWARP technology.  As a technology, iWARP is becoming mature with multiple vendors developing and shipping iWARP adapters – known as rNICs – and with production operating system support from Linux and Microsoft.  The University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL) has established an iWARP Consortium to assist vendors in testing for iWARP compliance and interoperability.

 

Ethernet Jumbo Frames - November 09

This paper is intended as a resource to help better understand what Jumbo frames are, the implications of their use and the types of applications which drive their use.  It is recognition that Jumbo frames are in common use and have real benefit.

Data Center Bridging Plugfest - August 09

In May 2009, the Ethernet Alliance sponsored an interoperability event where eight Ethernet vendors came together at the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL) for the first of several closed door interoperability test events, also known as "plugfests". The purpose for this event was to test the interoperability of several Data Center Bridging (DCB) technologies, which are a collection of various standards efforts that are in progress inside of IEEE 802.1™. The key findings from this event are captured in this white paper. 

Storage Traffic in a Converged 10 Gigabit Ethernet Network - May 09

The advantages of IEEE 802.3TM Ethernet are well documented and established for implementation in traditional Local Area Networks (LAN). The role of Ethernet in the LAN data center is evolving beyond the interconnection of clients, servers and switches. The modern Ethernet, specifically 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE), is becoming the new interconnection technology of choice for Storage Area Networks (SAN) using the Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) protocol on an IP-based network. The usage of Ethernet infrastructure is being further extended by a relatively new protocol that maps Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). This allows servers, storage, and management devices to communicate over Ethernet links in a converged data center fabric.

Data Center Bridging  - Nov. 08

Networks are the essential part of any modern data center and they must deliver reliability, availability and high performance. Enterprises rely on their data centers to run business operations, service providers rely on their data centers to generate revenues by delivering network services, and content providers rely on their data centers to distribute revenue-producing content. Ethernet is the most widely deployed networking technology today. Currently, it fulfills increasingly demanding requirements for a variety of business needs. But can Ethernet technology evolve to help data centers improve costeffectiveness and meet the demands for next-generation services.

Supercomputing 2008 10 Gigabit Ethernet Converged Data Center Demonstration - Nov. 08

The Ethernet Alliance converged data center demonstration shows the deployment of several types of mixed traffic over a multi-vendor 10 GbE infrastructure with physical links that consist of both UTP copper, twinax copper and fiber optic media. The SAN/LAN network is converged at Layer 2 using Ethernet as the common transport protocol. The demonstration data center runs 10 GbE application-to-application traffic, iSCSI storage and low latency traffic with a streaming video environment from iSCSI storage, FCoE over a lossless Ethernet network and converged traffic types via virtualized servers. The Ethernet Alliance demonstration shows a physical data center built with equipment from multiple vendors, switches, network interface card (NICs), converged network adapters (CNAs) and cabling systems that supports a complex yet realistic set of 10 GbE application environments.

Energy Efficency/Green                                                                                              

Improving the Energy Efficiency of Ethernet-Connected Devices: A Proposal for Proxying - Sept. 08

Enabling Ethernet to quickly and adaptively set its link rate in response to link utilization during full-power operation can yield even greater energy savings, and achieve an unbeatable energy efficiency of the most popular networking link layer protocol in the world.

PAUSE Power Cycle: A New Backwards Compatible Method to reduce Energy Use of Ethernet Switches - April 08

Energy efficient Ethernet switches can provide significant global savings in electricity consumption. In this white paper, a new backwards compatible method for achieving energy savings in Ethernet switches is designed, emulated, and evaluated.

Improving the Energy Efficiency of Ethernet: Adaptive Link Rate Proposal - July 06

Enabling Ethernet to quickly and adaptively set its link rate in response to link utilization during full-power operation can yield even greater energy savings, and achieve an unbeatable energy efficiency of the most popular networking link layer protocol in the world.

Industrial Ethernet                                                                                                         

Ethernet in the Entertainment Industry - Aug. 07

The integration of commercially available Ethernet products in theentertainment industry has dramatically improved our working lives.

Ethernet in Avionics Networks - Jan. 07

The subject of this white paper is the development of FDSE for use in Avionics networks, and the desirability of simple-to-analyze and deterministic network behavior in knowing where each packet is going and how long it takes to get to its final destination.

POE/POE+                                                                                                                        

Power over Ethernet: Empowering the Digital Home - June 2009

PoE has come a long way towards becoming the backbone of VoIP, WLAN and IP Security infrastructure at the Enterprise. The home is the new frontier now ready to reap the benefits of this mature, advanced and cost effective technology that distributes data and power on a single Ethernet cable. 

Power Over Ethernet Plus - April 08

The standard for Power over Ethernet (PoE), IEEE Std. 802.3afTM-2003, helped increase the value of an Ethernet port by

connecting and powering devices such as IP Phones using a common network infrastructure. Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE Plus) or IEEE P802.3at promises to deliver more power to enable a new breed of Ethernet devices and continue to support IEEE 802.3af.

SFP+                                                                                                                               

SFP+ Interoperability Demonstration White Paper - April 08

Ethernet Alliance members AMCC, Avago Technologies, Broadcom, ClariPhy, Cortina Systems, ExceLight Communications, Finisar, Gennum, Inphi, Intel, JDSU, MergeOptics, NetLogic Microsystems, Opnext and Vitesse successfully conducted multi-vendor interoperability testing of SFP+ 10GBASE-SR and 10GBASE-LR optical interfaces. This white paper provides additional detail about the testing setup, procedure and test results.

Gigabit Ethernet              &