How creaky is Ethernet the spec? [LWN.net]

How creaky is Ethernet the spec?

Posted Oct 30, 2009 15:47 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: How creaky is Ethernet the spec? by SEJeff
Parent article: JLS2009: Generic receive offload

There appears to be interoperability that justifies calling the new protocol Ethernet. You can replace one link of an existing Ethernet network with a 10G one and it all still works -- and not by simply negotiating down to the old protocol.

My understanding is that is what makes the 1500 byte MTU a constraint on 10GE.

Also: Can you replace a 1G ethernet card in a computer with a 10G and now talk at full speed (to a 10G peer) without replacing the device driver or anything else in the computer?

(Log in to post comments)

How creaky is Ethernet the spec?

Posted Oct 30, 2009 20:59 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

There are lots of 10G cards that also do 1G, but I don't think you'll find
any device drivers for 1G-only cards that work with the quite different
hardware that does 10G :))

Fundamentally though most of the hardware (as in the physical components
on the 10G board) that does 10G is also used to do 1G; and most of the
hardware that does 1G is also used to do 100M. The protocols could be
considered distinct, but they're so similar at heart that giving them the
same name seems sensible to me.