And to no one's great surprise, it will be used to aggregate the single Gigabit Ethernet links that enterprise managers are activating at breakneck pace. With the help of optical interfaces, the 10-gigabit standard is expected to extend Ethernet anywhere from 40 to 60 miles, well beyond its present limit of approximately 10 miles, and that's with single Gigabit Ethernet. And they want it to accommodate the massive volumes of data shipped across their backbones and data centers. They want to aggregate their current single Gigabit Ethernet links and are considering the possibilities of applications such as video on demand, the cost of which has, up until now, been difficult to justify. According to vendors, financial services companies are interested in 10 Gigabit Ethernet for running multiple services across high-speed pipes, as well as for disaster recovery or multitenant buildings where the server is offsite.
Pricing is another unknown.
The rapid uptake of Gigabit Ethernet underscores that there's little reason to think network managers won't continue to throw bandwidth at the problem, even when 10 Gigabit Ethernet becomes available. The rate of adoption is likely to parallel other high-speed technologies. Research and development organizations, government agencies and universities will be the early adopters, with corporate IT managers buying the equipment once it is shipping in volume and price competition takes hold late next year. Mid-2001 is when shipments should begin in earnest, according to Dell'Oro Group, which is projecting about 20,000 ports to be sold next year. That pales in comparison to nearly 10 million ports of single Gigabit Ethernet.