The race to make things just a little bit faster in the networking world has heated up in recent weeks thanks to the formation of the 25Gig Ethernet Consortium.  Arista Networks, along with Mellanox, Google, Microsoft, and Broadcom, has decided that 40Gig Ethernet is too expensive for most data center applications.  Instead, they’re offering up an alternative in the 25Gig range.

This podcast with Greg Ferro (@EtherealMind) and Andrew Conry-Murray (@Interop_Andrew) does a great job of breaking down the technical details on the reasoning behind 25Gig Ethernet.  In short, the current 10Gig connection is made of four multiplexed 2.5Gig connections.  To get to 25Gig, all you need to do is over clock those connections a little.  That’s not unprecedented, as 40Gig Ethernet accomplishes this by over clocking them to 10Gig, albeit with different optics.  Aside from a technical merit badge, one has to ask themselves “Why?”

High Hopes

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