– Yinglin (Frank) Yang, Technical Marketing Manager of the Enterprise Data Center Business Unit with CommScope (www.commscope.com), says:

Today’s CIOs face many challenges. For example, they are asked to do more with less and must prepare for and become more familiar with rapidly evolving technologies like virtualization, cloud computing, consolidated fabric, etc. I find the relentless demand for increased bandwidth remains a near constant requirement as a fundamental enabler.

Following the formal adoption of 40 and 100 Gb/s Ethernet Standards, the question of upgrading to 40 and 100 Gb/s is no longer an if but when and how.

I’ve seen many IT managers debate whether to delay deployment of 40 Gb/s Ethernet simply by waiting for more 100 Gb/s solutions to become available; however, in my opinion, this should not prevent them from deploying 40 Gb/s solutions now. Believe it or not, today’s economics are getting attractive for 40 Gb/s compared to current 10 Gb/s, and vastly better than Single-mode 100 Gb/s implementations.

I believe that one of the most attractive benefits of 40 Gb/s Ethernet is its broad applications and design flexibility. It can be effectively deployed in aggregation links in today’s data center networks. More than two switch vendors have either showcased or announced their 40 Gb/s switching products. I’ve also heard that 40 Gb/s Ethernet is predicted to be commonly applied to server access links by 2016.

Considering the productivity gains and corresponding decrease in OpEx, I think that migrating to 40 Gb/s Ethernet will prove to be cost-effective for those who do it right. There are a number of alternative cabling upgrade paths leading from 1/10 Gb/s over duplex multimode fiber to 40 and 100 Gb/s over parallel multimode fibers.

Given the choices out there, I believe that the polarity Standard “Method B” is the simplest, optimal and most cost-effective solution available. Polarity schemes of existing fiber cabling infrastructure and their adoption to future Ethernet technologies should be fundamental to any plans being made for implementations of speed beyond 10 Gb/s.

* CommScope is a regular contributor on Data Center Post