Sonnet Presto 10GbE network cards available

[Neodym]

Not much use for home environment yet (and pretty expensive), but maybe some professional MP users can make use of those:

1-port ($399,95) and 2-port (799,95) PCIe 1.1 (1-port)/2.0 (2-port) x8 cards. Transceivers available separately.

Man - we've come a long way since the first 10BaseT Ethernet cards...

 

[deconstruct60]

1-port ($399,95) and 2-port (799,95) PCIe 1.1 (1-port)/2.0 (2-port) x8 cards. Transceivers available separately.

Man - we've come a long way since the first 10BaseT Ethernet cards...

Long way on speed. Not so much on price. Apple introduced dual 2.0 Fiber Channel at $499 almost a decade ago. ( https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/01/06Apple-Unveils-New-Xserve-RAID-Storage-System.html)

Yes, it is 10Gb not 2Gb, but with two $199 transceivers that dual card is around $1,200. That should at least be closer to the $600 4GB FC offering now. 10GbE (with FCoE) should be displacing the 4 FC offerings at this point on price not just speed.

It has been a year, but so much for Intel's x540 driving 10GbE growth through more economic offerings (http://communities.intel.com/commun...ntroducing-the-intel-ethernet-controller-x540 and
" This space-saving single-chip solution delivers outstanding performance for low-cost, low-power LAN on motherboard (LOM) ... " http://newsroom.intel.com/community...et-controller-x540-brings-10gbe-to-the-masses).


But yeah the 1 port x8 offering sure looks like it is aimed at older boxes that had a FC card trying to get close to 5Gb speeds. If don't need two channel redundancy, more bandwidth than the relatively stale dual FC card at around the same price.

If Apple does do a new Mac Pro the FC cards will probably go away.

 

[scottrichardson]

Man - we've come a long way since the first 10BaseT Ethernet cards...

So we're talking networking at thunderbolt speeds?

 

[deconstruct60]

So we're talking networking at thunderbolt speeds?

Which existed before Thunderbolt even was "LightPeak".

This is a non distance limited , non 6 daisy chain devices per port, non pragmatically hierarchical networking technology. Different tool for a different job.

But yes, if think TB device pricing is high ....

 

[alphaod]

Damn 10km networking option…

 

[seanm9]

Pretty cool... I wonder what the bottleneck would be... The card or the SFP... When faster SFP's become available will they make the card faster? and it's odd they talk of the copper connections but don't show any copper SFP's for sale... I know they exist I use them at work every day...