Comment by cycomanic
7 months ago
It's also important to note that many optical links don't use ethernet as a protocol either (SDH/SONET are the common ones), although this is changing more and more.
7 months ago
It's also important to note that many optical links don't use ethernet as a protocol either (SDH/SONET are the common ones), although this is changing more and more.
Looks like SDH/SONET topped out at 40 Gbps which means it died 10 years ago.
SONET is widely used in the US.
Used, maybe, but [citation needed].
Built, no, definitely not voluntarily¹, Ethernet is the only non-legacy thing surviving for new installations for anything more than short range (few kilometer) runs. InfiniBand, CPRI and SDI are dying too and getting replaced with various over-Ethernet things, even for low-layer line aggregation there's FlexE these days.
¹ some installations are the exception confirming the rules; but as a telco sinking more money into keeping an old SONET installation alive is totally the choice of last resort. You'll have problems getting hardware too.
Disclaimer: I don't know what military installations do.
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