Sign in / up

back to article Dell: May the Force 10 (Gigabit Ethernet) be with your CAT6 cables

By acquiring Force 10 Networks back in July 2011, privatizing IT giant Dell moved itself from a maker of low-end switches to a contender for a slice of the top-end market for 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switches that are ever so slowly becoming the backbone of data centers. But you have to keep up with the times, and that means …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. the spectacularly refined chap

    Dubious cable specs

    I was under the impression 10GbE wasn't up to running on Cat6 over a full 100m span? Depending on the specifics of the particular install you may get 60m or so for isolated or shielded cables or down to around 40m for cables in crowded ducts. You need Cat6A for the full 100m.

    And as for Cat7 although you see it on sale all the time it is essentially a meaningless marketing term - there is no formal spec making it somewhat akin to "350MHz" Cat5e leads.

    0 0
    1. Nate Amsden
      Reply Icon

      Re: Dubious cable specs

      I believe your right - another manufacturer that I use uses the same chipset and says 55M for CAT6/5e, 100M for 6A.

      wonderful to see more support for 10GbaseT -- now just need to see support with more NICs and other systems(storage arrays etc) using it too!!

      0 0
      1. theblackhand
        Reply Icon

        Re: Dubious cable specs

        The question is where are you intending to use 10GbE?

        For server rooms using your existing, cheap Cat6 infrastructure to connect servers makes sense.

        Re-wiring a building to the higher 10GBaseT spec might not make so much sense....

        0 0
  2. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Cost differences between copper and SFPs

    When you price up 10Gb SFP+ devices you might change your tune about there being a penalty for using RJ45.

    10Gb optics are expensive. Doubly so if you have to use name-brand devices.

    For server room use or even small building runs, RJ45 makes sense - but I'd only buy this stuff if it has TRILL. Spanning tree has a lot of drawbacks in high speed environments and even moreso in meshed ones.

    1 0
  3. SirWired 1

    Forgive my ignorance (and it is admittedly vast), but in what applications are an additional 3usec of latency going to be an issue? Budget HPC clusters perhaps? And if it is an issue, I would imagine that there are more cost-efficient ways of reducing latency (i.e. the purchase of more computing node horsepower) vs. the SFP+ upgrade costs.

    0 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Ya, it's called FDR Inifiband

      0 0
  4. Levente Szileszky
    WTF?

    Force10....

    ...didn't even have a basic web GUI and used to charge another $5-10k for its switch mgmt software - have they managed to fix any of these atrocities?

    0 0
  5. MMull

    - Openflow on a TOR switch? Oh please.

    - If I want "cheap" 10GBase-T, I´d go for http://www.netgear.com/landing/10gigabit/

    0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like