There has been an aggressive push towards the adoption of Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop, especially by IT solution providers.
In the US, for example, companies have gradually started to consider or implement solutions that will enable Gigabit to the desktop. "However, in SA there has been very little movement," comments Douglas Downing, Intel business manager: servers, desktops and networking at local distributor Rectron.
One of the key reasons for this is in spite of what vendors are propagating, users and industry observers believe that there are few applications that are able to utilise the high-speed network gear, and technical hurdles such as PC throughput that hamper widespread adoption.
Prominent research authority Gartner goes so far as to say that there is no need for a mainstream end-user to have Gigabit Ethernet on his desktop. "For daily computing tasks most enterprise end-users take on - e-mail, Web browsing and some client/server application - 10/100Mbps Ethernet is just fine," says Gartner.
"This statement is probably not that far fetched, as a lot of users do feel that they only need to surf the Web and use word processing programs, for which they don`t need Gigabit Ethernet," he says.
As with most new industry trends, however, user adoption is not necessarily the major obstacle, but rather technology issues.
Explains Downing: "Many PCI-based desktop machines were not built for Gigabit speed LANs. This means that users that are serious about migrating to high-speed PCs might have to upgrade more than NICs [network interface cards] and wiring closet switches.
"The problem is that the PCI shared bus architecture has a total bandwidth of 133MBps between peripheral cards and the processor and memory. The law of physics, therefore, tell you that you`re not going to get full-duplex Gigabit Ethernet on older PCI systems."
PCI has long been the standard bus interface of connecting devices such as NICs, RAID controllers, modems and other peripheral cards to PCs and servers.
The good news is that latest bus architecture technologies - such as PCI-X and PCI Express are starting to catch on in server connection, which will hopefully trickle down to PCs.
He adds: "In the meantime, vendors have created proprietary methods for making PCs Gigabit-ready. Intel`s Communications Streaming Architecture, for example, is an I/O technology that bypasses 32-bit, 33MHz PCI bus systems and allows full duplex Gigabit Ethernet support for Intel NICs.
"With PCI and Gigabit Ethernet NICs, you have a very high-speed connection that`s forced to share bandwidth with other slots on the bus. The Communication Streaming Architecture, however, removes the PCI bottleneck by offloading the LAN traffic from the PCI bus, to give it direct access to system resources."
For now, Gigabit desktops are limited to niche markets such as design and special effects studios that have unusual end user demands. The company responsible for the digital special effects for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Weta Digital, uses dozens of workstations that are Gigabit Ethernet-enabled.
Similarly, Pixar, the makers of Toy Story and Monsters Inc, uses 400 workstations with Gigabit Ethernet connections for its digital animation artists.
Concludes Downing: "In spite of all the obvious hurdles that we still need to overcome, Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop is a reality that will see significant adoption in the next few years.
"As with a lot of other industry trends, South African users will cautiously watch its global adoption and then follow, implementing solutions that enable seamless and cost-effective migration."
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