LINX Wants Its 100G

4:50 PM Brocade might even skip 40G to get it to them, and to other exchanges

By Craig Matsumoto, Light Reading
June 02, 2010
URL: http://www.lightreading.com/blog/100-gbit-s-ethernet/linx-wants-its-100g/240119318

4:50 PM -- Want to hear another provider talking about needing 100 Gbit/s right away? Sure you do.

The London Internet Exchange Ltd. (LINX) wants to put in 100-Gbit/s Ethernet connections and will start link-aggregating them once they're "cost-effective -- and for us, cost-effective is probably earlier" than for most, says Richard Yule, LINX sales and marketing manager.

In the absence of 100-Gbit/s Ethernet, LINX has settled for aggregating 10-Gbit/s Ethernet links -- that is, combining them so that the network considers them a single pipe. Sixteen of them make up a virtual 160-Gbit/s Ethernet connection, and that's the maximum LINX has been able to do so far.

Today, Brocade Communications Systems Inc. announced denser blades for its MRX line of routers, providing 16 10-Gbit/s Ethernet ports per slot. (The blades carry eight ports each and fit in half-slots.) That makes possible the aggregation of 32 ports into a 320-Gbit/s pipe, something Foundry Networks talked about in 2008, before getting bought by Brocade. (See Brocade Ups 10GE Density and Foundry LAGs Ahead.)

But even that just puts things off for a few months, Yule says.

The question with any of these urgent-need cases is the volume. LINX's 160-Gbit/s aggregated links are used at three core locations, while the rest of the network is OK with aggregating four 10-Gbit/s Ethernet links.

But where it's needed, it's really needed. Peak traffic rates on the LINX network exceed 600 Gbit/s. "That's not a peak that lasts for a few seconds; it stays up there for much of the day," Yule says. "We're going to have to go to 100 Gbit/s in quite a major way in the near future."

Brocade has a niche with some of these big exchanges. (See Dutch Exchange Sticks With Brocade and Brocade Claims Top IXPs.) So, company officials say they'll be putting a focus on 100-Gbit/s Ethernet, and it sounds as if they'll give it more urgency than 40 Gbit/s.

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading