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10-Gigabit Ethernet, sometimes called 10-GbE or 10 GigE, is the latest improvement on the Ethernet standard, ratified in 2003 for fiber as the 802.3ae standard, in 2004 for twinax cable as the 802.3ak standard, and in 2006 for UTP as the 802.3an standard.

10-Gigabit Ethernet offers ten times the speed of Gigabit Ethernet. This extraordinary throughput plus compatibility with existing Ethernet standards has resulted in 10-Gigabit Ethernet quickly becoming the new standard for high-speed network backbones, largely supplanting older technologies such as ATM over SONET. 10-Gigabit Ethernet has even made inroads in the area of storage area networks (SAN) where Fibre Channel has long been the dominant standard. This new Ethernet standard offers a fast, simple, relatively inexpensive way to incorporate super high-speed links into your network.

Because 10-Gigabit Ethernet is simply an extension of the existing Ethernet standards family, it’s a true Ethernet standard—it’s totally backwards compatible and retains full compatibility with 10-/100-/1000-Mbps Ethernet. It has no impact on existing Ethernet nodes, enabling you to seamlessly upgrade your network with straightforward upgrade paths and scalability.

10-Gigabit Ethernet is less costly to install than older high-speed standards such as ATM. And not only is it relatively inexpensive to install, but the cost of network maintenance and management also stays low—10-Gigabit Ethernet can easily be managed by local network administrators.

10-Gigabit Ethernet is also more efficient than other high-speed standards. Because it uses the same Ethernet frames as earlier Ethernet standards, it can be integrated into your network using switches rather than routers. Packets don’t need to be fragmented, reassembled, or translated for data to get through.

Unlike earlier Ethernet standards, which operate in half- or full-duplex, 10-Gigabit Ethernet operates in full-duplex only, eliminating collisions and abandoning the CSMA/CD protocol used to negotiate half-duplex links. It maintains MAC frame compatibility with earlier Ethernet standards with 64- to 1518-byte frame lengths. The 10-Gigabit standard does not support jumbo frames, although there are proprietary methods for accommodating them.

Fiber 10-Gigabit Ethernet standards
There are two groups of physical-layer (PHY) 10-Gigabit Ethernet standards for fiber: LAN-PHY and WAN-PHY.

LAN-PHY is the most common group of standards. It’s used for simple switch and router connections over privately owned fiber and uses a line rate of 10.3125 Gbps with 64B/66B encoding.

The other group of 10-Gigabit Ethernet standards, WAN-PHY, is used with SONET/SDH interfaces for wide area networking across cities, states—even internationally.

LAN-PHY
10GBASE-SR (Short-Range) is a serial short-range fiber standard that operates over two multimode fibers. It has a range of 26 to 82 meters (85 to 269 ft.) over legacy 62.5-µm 850-nm fiber and up to 300 meters (984 ft.) over 50-µm 850-nm fiber.

10GBASE-LR (Long-Range) is a serial long-range 10-Gbps Ethernet standard that operates at ranges of up to 25 kilometers (15.5 mi.) on two 1310-nm single-mode fibers.

10GBASE-ER (Extended-Range) is similar to 10GBASE-LR but supports distances up to 40 kilometers (24.9 mi.) over two 1550-nm single-mode fibers.

10GBASE-LX4 uses Coarse-Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) to achieve ranges of 300 meters (984 ft.) over two legacy 850-nm multimode fibers or up to 10 kilometers (6.2 mi.) over two 1310-nm single-mode fibers. This standard multiplexes four data streams over four different wavelengths in the range of 1300 nm. Each wavelength carries 3.125 Gbps to achieve 10-Gigabit speed.

WAN-PHY
In fiber-based Gigabit Ethernet, the 10GBASE-SR, 10GBASE-LR, and 10GBASE-ER LAN-PHY standards have WAN-PHY equivalents called 10GBASE-SW, 10GBASE-LW, and 10GBASE-EW. There is no WAN-PHY standard corresponding to 10GBASE-LX4.

WAN-PHY standards are designed to operate across high-speed systems such as SONET and SDH. These systems are often telco operated and can be used to provide high-speed data delivery worldwide. WAN-PHY 10-Gigabit Ethernet operates within SDH and SONET using an SDH/SONET frame running at 9.953 Gbps without the need to directly map Ethernet frames into SDH/SONET.

WAN-PHY is transparent to data—from the user’s perspective it looks exactly the same as LAN-PHY.

10-Gigabit Ethernet over Copper
10GBASE-CX4
10GBASE-CX4 is a standard that enables Ethernet to run over CX4 cable, which consists of four twinaxial copper pairs bundled into a single cable. CX4 cable is also used in high-speed InfiniBand® and Fibre Channel storage applications. Although CX4 cable is somewhat less expensive to install than fiber optic cable, it’s limited to distances of up to 15 meters. Because this standard uses such a specialized cable at short distances, 10GBASE-CX4 is generally used only in limited data center applications such as connecting servers or switches.

10GBASE-Kx
10GBASE-Kx is backplane 10-Gigabit Ethernet and consists of two standards. 10GBASE-KR is a serial standard compatible with 10GBASE-SR, 10GBASE-LR, and 10GBASE-ER. 10GBASE-KX4 is compatible with 10GBASE-LX4. These standards use up to 40 inches of copper printed circuit board with two connectors in place of cable. These very specialized standards are used primarily for switches, routers, and blade servers in data center applications.

10GBASE-T
10GBASE-T is the 10-Gigabit standard that uses the familiar shielded or unshielded copper UTP cable. It operates at distances of up to 55 meters (180 ft.) over existing Category 6 cabling or up to 100 meters (328 ft.) over augmented Category 6, or “6a,” cable, which is specially designed to reduce crosstalk between UTP cables. Category 6a cable is somewhat bulkier than Category 6 cable but retains the familiar RJ-45 connectors.

To send data at these extremely high speeds across four-pair UTP cable, 10GBASE-T uses sophisticated digital signal processing to suppress crosstalk between pairs and to remove signal reflections.

10-Gigabit Ethernet Applications
> 10-Gigabit Ethernet is already being deployed in applications requiring extremely high bandwidth:
> As a lower-cost alternative to Fibre Channel in storage area networking (SAN) applications.
> High-speed server interconnects in server clusters.
> Aggregation of Gigabit segments into 10-Gigabit Ethernet trunk lines.
> High-speed switch-to-switch links in data centers.
> Extremely long-distance Ethernet links over public SONET infrastructure.

Although 10-Gigabit Ethernet is currently being implemented only by extremely high-volume users such as enterprise networks, universities, telecommunications carriers, and Internet service providers, it’s probably only a matter of time before it’s delivering video to your desktop. Remember that only a few years ago, a mere 100-Mbps was impressive enough to be called “Fast Ethernet.”

Alien crosstalk (ANEXT) is a critical and unique measurement in 10-GbE systems. Crosstalk, used in 10/100/1000BASE-T systems, measures the mixing of signals between wire pairs within a cable. Alien Crosstalk, in 10-GbE systems, is the measurement of the signal coupling between wire pairs in different, adjacent cables.

The amount of ANEXT depends on a number of factors, including the promixity of adjacent cables and connectors, the cable length, cable twist density, and EMI. Patch panels and connecting hardware are also affected by Alien Crosstalk.

With Alien Crosstalk, the affected cable is called the disturbed or victim cable. The surrounding cables are the disturber cables.

Category 7/Class F (ISO/IEC 11801:2002) specifies a frequency range of 1–600 MHz over 100 meters of fully shielded twisted-pair cabling. It encompasses four individually shielded pairs inside an overall shield, called Shielded/Foiled Twisted Pair (S/FTP) or Foiled/ Foiled Twisted Pair (F/FTP). There is a pending class Fa, based on the use of S/FTP cable to 1000 MHz. It can support 10GBASE-T transmissions.

With both types of cable, each twisted pair is enclosed in foil. In S/FTP cable, all four pairs are encased in an overall metal braid. In F/FTP, the four pairs are encased in foil.

Category 7/Class F cable can be terminated with two interface designs as specified in IEC 6063-7-7 and IEC 61076-3-104. One is an RJ-45 compatible GG-45 connector. The other is the more common TERA connector, which was launched in 1999.

Category 7/Class F is backwards compatible with traditional CAT6 and CAT5 cable, but it has far more stringent specifications for crosstalk and system noise. The fully shielded cable virtually eliminates crosstalk between the pairs. In addition, the cable is noise resistant, which makes the Category 7/Class F systems ideal for high EMI areas, such as industrial and medical imaging facilities.
Category 7/Class F cable can also increase security by preventing the emission of data signals from the cable to nearby areas.

CAT6A is a 10-Gigabit Ethernet over copper proposal to the CAT6 standard. The IEEE published a draft standard (Std 802.3an) in October 2004.

The draft calls for 10-Gigabit data transmission over a 4-pair twisted-pair copper cable for a distance of 100 meters on Class F or Class E-augmented copper cabling.

Class E cabling requires a line-encoding scheme (PAM 12) and electronics to achieve the 10-Gbps transmission for 100 meters. Current CAT6 cabling systems may support 10-Gigabit Ethernet over limited distances.

The draft extends CAT6 electrical specifications from 250 MHz to 500 MHz. It also proposes a new measurement: Power-Sum Alien Crosstalk to 500 MHz. Alien Crosstalk is a coupled signal in a disturbed pair arising from a signal in a neighboring cable.

The IEEE released the 802.3an 10GBASE-T standard in June 2006. This standard specifies 10-Gbps data transmission over four-pair copper cabling. 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10-GbE) transmission includes up to 37 meters of CAT6 cable (with installation mitigation techniques), 100 meters of Augmented Category 6 (CAT6A) UTP or F/UTP cable or 100 meters of S/FTP CAT7/Class F cable.

CAT6A is the ANSI/TIA 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10-GbE) over copper standard. Its requirements are covered in ANSI/TIA-568-C.2 (Balanced Twisted-Pair Communications Cabling and Components Standard) published in August 2009. It defines 10-Gigabit data transmission over a 4-connector twisted-pair CAT6A copper cable for a distance of 100 meters.

Category 6A cabling is designed to support next-generation applications, including the transfer of large amounts of data at high speeds, up to 10 Gbps. CAT6A extends electrical specifications to 500 MHz from 250 MHz for CAT6 cabling. CAT6A cables are fully backward compatible with previous categories, including CAT6 and 5e. Category 6A is also designed to support bundled cable installations up to 100 meters and PoE+ low-power implementations. The standard includes the performance parameter, Alien Crosstalk (ANEXT). Because of its higher performance transmission speeds and higher MHz rating, CAT6A cable needs to be tested for external noise outside the cable, which wasn’t a concern with previous cabling categories. CAT6A UTP also has a much larger diameter than previous cables.

Alien crosstalk (ANEXT) is a critical and unique measurement in 10-GbE systems. Crosstalk, measured in 10/100/1000BASE-T systems, is the mixing of signals between wire pairs within a cable. Alien Crosstalk, in 10-GbE systems, is the measurement of the unwanted signal coupling between wire pairs in different and adjacent cables or from one balanced twisted-pair component, channel, or permanent link to another.

The amount of ANEXT depends on a number of factors, including the type of cable, cable jacket, cable length, cable twist density, proximity of adjacent cables, and connectors, and EMI. Patch panels and connecting hardware are also affected by ANEXT.

With Alien Crosstalk, the affected cable is called the victim cable. The surrounding cables are the disturber cables.

There are a number of ways to mitigate the effects of ANEXT in CAT6A runs. According to the standards, ANEXT can be improved by laying CAT6A UTP cable loosely in pathways and raceways with space between the cables. This contrasts to the tightly bundled runs of CAT6/5e cable that we are used to. The tight bundles present a worst-case scenario of six cables around one, thus the center cable would be adversely affected by ANEXT. CAT6A UTP cable needs to be tested for ANEXT. This is a complex and time-consuming process in which all possible wire-pair combinations need to be tested for ANEXT and far-end ANEXT. It can take 50 minutes to test one link in a bundle of 24 CAT 6A UTP cables.

To virtually eliminate the problem of ANEXT, you can use CAT6A F/UTP cable. The F indicates an outer foil shield encasing four unshielded twisted pairs. This cable is also a good choice when security is an issue because it doesn’t emit signals. In addition, CAT6A F/UTP cable works well in noisy environments with a lot of EMI/RFI.

Installation of CAT6A F/UTP is simpler, too, because the cable features a smaller outside diameter than CAT6A UTP. Its construction makes it easier to pull and more resilient. The cable also has a smaller diameter so you can run more cables in a conduit or pathway, and have greater patch panel port density.

For more information, see the CAT6A F/UTP vs. UTP: What You Need to Know white paper in the Resources section at blackbox.com.