[j-nsp] 10 Gb Nics..

[Phil Mayers]

On 04/05/11 17:56, OBrien, Will wrote:
> Hmm. Got suggestions for copper 10g nics? I see prices that are similar to SFP+ nics with twinax cables...

We're buying Intel E10G41AT2 for about £350, which is a shade cheaper 
than an unpopulated SFP+ card.

Couple of points:

Tediously it's either/or - 10gbaseT can't run in SFP+ (due to power 
constratints IIRC?) so until the market decides what is going to win out 
for server connectivity, you're stuck with either/or - SFP+ with twinax 
or optical, or 10gbaseT. Same issue with a lot of the switches :o(

Secondly, you're right that SFP+ with twinax is about the same price as 
a 10gbaseT card (we buy the latter very slightly cheaper, but it's 
nothing to write home about). However, personally I think twinax is a 
bit inferior to 10gbaseT - the former has distance limits which we can't 
tolerate, and the slightly higher power draw and transmission latency of 
10gbaseT don't matter to us. I'm also dubious about the long term 
physical resilience of twinax cables, and of course cat6 patch leads are 
far, far cheaper.

I'm not saying that's the last word though. The market seems to be 
hesitant about picking a winner for server 10G connectivity. We decided 
to just go with a "toe in the water" deployment of 10gbaseT. It's small 
enough we can junk it if the wind changes in favour of SFP+

(There also seems to be even more chance of vendor lock on SFP+ given 
some comments by other vendors, and the differences in transceiver 
architecture with SFP+)