What do I need to support 10GB on an 8610 (8691SF)

[Trackhappy]

We have a dark fibre which is capable of 10Gb, but we are only utilising 1Gb. We have 8610's with 8691SF cards. What would be required to enable us to utilise 10Gb across the single mode dark fibre? I assume we would have to upgarde our switch fabric cards?

Thanks.
Glenn.

[bryans]

What type of module are you going to use for connecting to the 10G dark fiber? Is is a R-module or RS-module?

[TheKingSlacker]

Trackhappy,

To be able to run 10Gb across your dark fiber you going to need to spend a ton on upgrading your 8600.. You need to purchase new switch fabric, power supplies, blades, and possible a chassis (if doesn't support R-series modules.)

You might be better off doing what we did.. We purchase a 8 channel passive HP CWDM for both sides for around $15K.. then each of the Nortel branded 1Gb CWDM SFP of about $1800 each. The storage team using a couple of the channels for 4Gb SAN traffic.. It worked out really sweet for us.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/cwdm/index.html

The King.

[Trackhappy]

Thanks Guys. Updating the 8600 is obviously unrealistic. The CWDM modules look great, will look into it.

[TheKingSlacker]

Another option, is two use a pair of 5530s in between the 8600s to handle the 10G optics. You should be able to do that is $15K or less depending on your discount levels. You can also get the 5530s on gray market (Ebay or CXtec) for a lot less than retail.

The King.

[Michael McNamara]

Why are you looking for 10Gbps?

The vast majority of networks barely stress a 1Gbps network, forget about a 10Gbps network. The vast majority of servers in my network don't put out more than 100Mbps of traffic and even then it's only during traffic spikes. If you are looking to deploy ritualized environments then the argument can be made for 10Gbps given the large number of 1Gbps NICs required.

As mentioned CWDM is a great option... so to is the option to deploy 5530s.

There's always more than one way to 'skin the cat', and that's especially true in networking.

Cheers!

[Trackhappy]

What we have is a remote office with about 30 staff working there. The link back to us has historically been for Internet, email, file, and backup only. What is happeining now is that we are going to install another Internet link and a server at their site. The Internet and server will dish up archived streaming video (via a database driven user selection system) to the public, which will be copied from our site at the end of each recorded session (twice a day or more). We don't want to cause disruption for the current users while the files are copying, and don't want the files to take too long to copy.

So... MUCH more traffic, and the need to separate the streams for priority purposes. CDWM looks great, but my management doesn't have much appetite for such "out there" technology, so looks like switches it is. We are also a somewhat poor Govt. entity so things have to be done cheap. Looks like HP switches are way cheaper, but we will see.

Thanks for everybody's input.

[Michael McNamara]

I would look at your current WAN utilization... 1Gbps is a lot of bandwidth, especially for 30 users. We have offices with 50 - 100 users using virtual private networking over broadband (Comcast 10/5 and Verizon FiOS 20/5) and then we have some offices with 500+ people connecting over a 1Gbps (dark fiber) which is way under utilized the majority of the time.

CWDM has been around for quite sometime and has really become affordable for many organizations. It's DWDM that still commands a significant price premium but again it's overkill for the vast majority of mid-large sized enterprises.

If you are concerned about the video "choking" your WAN link you could do a number of things. The simplest of which, set the NICs of the servers in question to 100Mbps. That way they will only be able to consume 100Mbps of our 1000Mbps WAN link. You could also look into a QoS policy to mark the video traffic discard eligible, etc... I use the 100Mbps trick on a number of situations and it's very clean and works great.

Good Luck!

[Trackhappy]

Great idea setting to 100Mb. Problem is we need the files transferred fast as well, and they will be a binary file transfers across this link, not video streaming so discard is out.