One of the biggest challenges facing small-to-medium sized businesses (SMEs) today is the exploding bandwidth demands of the latest networking devices.
WiFi standards such as 802.11ac and increasingly powerful servers and workstations that move large data files are demanding network access speeds beyond the conventional one gigabit-per-second (1Gbps) or 1 000BASE-T standard to faster platforms such as 2.5Gbps and even 5Gbps.
A data-hungry network storage device such as Netgear's ReadyNAS appliance can handle close to 20Gbps, but a conventional network holds it back from completing its hourly backups or fast replications, says Tobie van Schalkwyk, business development manager at Duxbury Networking, the local Netgear distributor.
It begs the question: why don't SMEs simply migrate to the 10Gbps Ethernet (10GBASE-T) standard?
The reason has to do with costs. The price of an average 10Gbps switch port is still about 20 times higher than a gigabit port.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that 10Gbps Ethernet technology is central to one of the fastest growing segments of the networking industry and that Netgear has captured over 75% of the SMB 10Gbps switch market.
Netgear's success can be attributed to it motivating a significant cost reduction of 10Gbps Ethernet switches, making them more affordable for SME-sized wallets. For example, network managers can now purchase a 10Gbps Ethernet switch for under R1 400 per Ethernet port. Only a few years ago, the price was around R6 500 per port.
However, and this is significant, 10Gbps Ethernet has one major disadvantage. It requires special quality cabling. 10Gbps needs category 6A (Cat6A) cables or higher, while 1 000BASE-T speeds can be achieved over legacy Cat5E cabling.
It's likely the cabling running in the drop ceilings of most buildings today is legacy Cat5E or even earlier Cat5.
A 'rip-and-replace' of a building's Ethernet wiring would set a business owner back roughly R4 000 per physical connection. Since around three or four connections per employee are generally required, this would be a costly operation.
PCs, VOIP phones, IP cameras, wireless access points, displays, servers and storage all need to connect over Ethernet, not counting the Internet-connected devices such as thermostats, door locks and sensors associated with the Internet of things (IOT).
So, is there no alternative, but to live with 1 000BASE-T forever?
Fortunately, there is a way to run higher Ethernet speeds over Cat5E networking cables, by applying a new technology called Multi-Gig Ethernet or NBASE-T. This new standard supports speeds of 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps over existing cabling.
Why has the SME market not moved to this new Multi-Gig standard over the past few years?
Again, the answer is related to cost. However, development time has also had a role to play in its slow uptake.
The SME market needs flexible Ethernet switches with a variety of port configurations. For example, to supply enough bandwidth to four modern WiFi access points running WiFi speeds up to 2.5Gbps, at least four 2.5Gbps POE (Power over Ethernet) connections to a switch are required, together with an uplink port on the switch connecting to the core network running at 10Gbps.
Essentially, a 4:1 ratio of 2.5Gbps to 10Gbps is considered ideal. This is commonly referred to as a "non-blocking" architecture.
This is why Netgear's first Multi-Gig aggregation switch, the M4200, has six 2.5Gbps POE ports, two 5Gbps ports and two 10Gbps fibre uplink ports.
The switch works with existing Cat5E cables between the switch and the access points, which can be up to 100 metres distant. This means the switch can be used to upgrade an existing WiFi network from 1Gbps backhaul to 2.5Gbps, or to futureproof a new network.
While it makes sense for the deployment of very fast WiFi, the challenge of bringing low cost Multi-Gig to every network connection in a business remains. In addition, what if organisations want to combine legacy Ethernet speeds (100Mbps or 100BASE-T, still in use for phones and audio because it is reliable and cheap) with 1Gbps, 10Gbps and new 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps speeds?
The good news is that Netgear has solved these problems by releasing a series of Multi-Gig Ethernet switches that support 2.5Gbps, 5Gbps and 10Gbps as well as 100Mbps and 1Gbps.
Since these switches run at five different speeds, they are dubbed 5-Speed Ethernet switches.
With this affordable technology, equipment makers are adopting the Multi-Gig and 5-speed standard, which is rapidly driving down the cost of deployments. Already, 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps speeds are on a variety of devices and there are PCI network cards that can be retrofitted to existing PCs and servers.
Share