What Benefits Can 10GBASE-T Copper Bring to Data Centers?

More than ten years ago 10GBASE-T was still a bud that had not shown its real beauty to us, but now it has been brought to data centers for almost ten years. A few years after 10GBASE-T copper was introduced into the market, it became widely available as LAN on Motherboard (LOM, a chipset that has been embedded directly on the motherboard and capable of network connections) or add-in adapters on servers. Why is it popularly adopted in data centers? What benefits does 10GABSE-T copper bring to data centers?

10GBASE-T copper switch and twisted pair

Plentiful Benefits of 10GBASE-T Copper Adoption

The benefits of 10GBASE-T copper can be measured in more than one aspect, including both obvious hardware part and hidden profits it can bring.

Nature Endowed Benefits
Like previous copper BASE-T standards, 10GBASE-T copper is backward compatible with 10/100/1000BASE-T. So using 10GBASE-T allows for a seamless migration from lower data rate to 10GbE. When used with already existing copper BASE-T, they can auto-negotiate to the highest performance transmission mode they both support. So old 10/100/1000BASE-T devices are still supported even if the faster Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet copper switches in data centers are replaced by 10GBASE-T copper. This will also accelerate the expansion of 10G to the end users.

The second benefit of 10GBASE-T copper adoption is the cost-efficiency to use cheap twisted-pair copper cabling for lowest cost 10GbE deployment. In addition, it provides the advantage of carrying on the experience and expertise built on prior-generation BASE-T knowledge and training.

The third improvement is in power consumption. Comparing with 1000BASE-T, 10GBASE-T copper consumes much less power on per-Gbps per-port basis. It is possible to achieve 1W per 10GbE port with 10GBASE-T technology, making it more efficient to design high-port density 10GBASE-T switches and LOMs. In the data center scenario, when there's need to connect thousands of servers by 10GBASE-T, it will be a great decrease in power consumption comparing with previous Gigabit copper Ethernet. Therefore it will also be a large saving on energy and money.

low power consumption

Also when compared with copper direct attached cable (DAC), 10GBASE-T copper cabling provides longer distance to server or switch than DAC, extending the cable lengths from several meters to up to 100 meters. It will be long enough to support nearly all data center topologies.

Future-proofing for 40GBASE-T
From copper fast Ethernet to copper Gigabit Ethernet, and now to 10GBASE-T copper, we have been enjoying the continuity of BASE-T networks. But the efforts on copper network does not stop at this level. Future-generation BASE-T is under development. In order to make use of the advantages of low cost twisted pair to compensate the gaps that DAC can not do, twisted pair is anticipated to support up to 30 m of structured cabling for 40GBASE-T. This will allow one interconnect in both Top of Rack and End of Row network infrastructure.

PoE ports are adopted in copper fast Ethernet PoE switches and Gigabit PoE switches. There’s potential for 10GBASE-T to support PoE technology as well. So in near future, IP devices relying on PoE are able to upgrade to higher bandwidth and users will enjoy better performance brought by the improvement.

Conclusion

10GBASE-T copper benefits data centers by providing convenient and cost-effective 10G solutions, reducing the power consumption, expanded cabling scale, future-proofing 40GBASE-T and 10GBASE-T PoE ability. The successive adoption of BASE-T networks will continue to benefit data centers as well as end users.

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