NextGen LAN Infrastructure

What does the Next Generation LAN look like?

 Panelists
• Jeremy Littlejohn
– President, RISC Networks Inc.
NextGen LAN Challenges
 Current LAN Shortcomings
Total Have Avg. Have Avg.
Uplinks Errors Errors Discards Discards
• Ethernet is Lossy 5923 446 2209015 142 89432

– Much worse that Fibre Channel

– Even worse when poorly executed
• Current Topologies are Inefficient
– Spanning Tree is beautiful but dated
• Wireless LAN (802.11 a/b/g)
– Works but is very crowded
• Aggregation points are choke points
 Does Loss Matter?

Source: NetEx
 Top NextGen LAN Challenges
• More Efficient
– TRILL / 802.1aq Low
Latency Lossless

– MPLS / VPLS in the LAN

• Mobility Low
Jitter

– 802.11n
• Speed
– 10 Gbps Ethernet Success

• Adaptability
– DCB (Data Center Bridging)
 10 GB Ethernet Saturation
• 109
Customers 300000

• 34 Have 250000
250,039

10Gbps
200000
• 2,271
Average
150000 135,870
Nodes
100000
• Only 396
10Gbps
50000
ports in use
871
0
1.0 Gbps 10 Gbps 100 Mbps
 Some Vendor-ese I heard this week
• Network needs to be Simpler
• Network must become Flat
• Open Standards are the reason that our
product works
• Virtual Machines are flying all over the place
 What do You Think?
• Thank you for participating!