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fonzbear2000
Premium Member
join:2005-08-09
Saint Paul, MN

fonzbear2000

Premium Member

What is 100G optical?

»www.fiercetelecom.com/st ··· 13-01-17

What exactly is that? Does it have anything to do with internet connections? What, if any, are the benefits of it to us? I'm looking for a super easy to understand explanation of this.

graysonf
MVM
join:1999-07-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL

graysonf

MVM

Try googling '100G optical'
Moffetts
join:2005-05-09
San Mateo, CA

Moffetts to fonzbear2000

Member

to fonzbear2000
What are you doing on fiercetelecom if you don't know what a backbone or core is?

fonzbear2000
Premium Member
join:2005-08-09
Saint Paul, MN

1 edit

fonzbear2000

Premium Member

said by Moffetts:

What are you doing on fiercetelecom if you don't know what a backbone or core is?

I saw the news item on the home page of this site:
fonzbear2000

fonzbear2000 to graysonf

Premium Member

to graysonf
said by graysonf:

Try googling '100G optical'

I just did that and now have a better understanding of all this. It's great to see that Comcast is getting into better technology that can bring us even faster speeds.

YukonHawk
join:2001-01-07
Patterson, NY

2 edits

YukonHawk

Member

Disregard.

SpaethCo
Digital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

1 edit

SpaethCo to fonzbear2000

MVM

to fonzbear2000
said by fonzbear2000:

What exactly is that? Does it have anything to do with internet connections? What, if any, are the benefits of it to us? I'm looking for a super easy to understand explanation of this.

It's really just a higher capacity interface, like the bump from 100mbps Ethernet to gigabit Ethernet. This larger interface allows for more benefits in cases where you would normally have multiple links between devices.

Packets need to be kept in order from source to destination or you run into flow problems with layer 4 protocols like TCP. In order to accomplish this, routers hash traffic flows so that any given flow stays on one particular interface.

The problem carriers face today is that hashing has to be done at wire speed in hardware, so it cannot be traffic aware. This results in uneven loading.

Say you have 25gbps of traffic between Atlanta and Dallas. As a carrier, you might need 4 or 5 10gig links to carry that traffic because of the unevenness of the hashing algorithm.

When you increase your interface capacity to 100gig, you can aggregate more traffic together in fewer links.

Fewer, bigger links = increased efficiency, lower operational cost per mbps.

fonzbear2000
Premium Member
join:2005-08-09
Saint Paul, MN

fonzbear2000

Premium Member

Thanks for the explanation Espaeth. Definitely a great thing for Comcast then!
Madtown
Premium Member
join:2008-04-26
93637-2905

Madtown to fonzbear2000

Premium Member

to fonzbear2000
Will this help lower cost for the customers too?
Moffetts
join:2005-05-09
San Mateo, CA

Moffetts

Member

No.

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

1 edit

tshirt to Madtown

Premium Member

to Madtown
It helps not raise the cost of increased usage.
This is why you keep hearing that the cost of backbone transit is less and less per bit everyday.
Unfortunately, It takes a huge investment to rollout this technology and all the associated upgrades to make use of the extra bandwidth, so while your bill didn't drop, your cost per bit is likely less than ever before.