Monday, 20 June 2011

Why is everything over Ethernet?

"One Protocol to rule them all, One Protocol to find them,
One Protocol to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."



So I get the concept right... standardization makes things easier.  I'm pretty much all for it, but occasionally you have to think why?


PoE - Power over Ethernet
AoE - ATA over Ethernet
iSCSI - 
FCoE - Fibre Channel over Ethernet
PPPoE - PPP over Ethernet


I'm sure the list goes on.


Don't get me wrong, I like Ethernet as much as the next man.  I'm doing nothing to prevent the spread - the only oE's in that list I don't have in my home are simply because I don't have the spare cash to.  But is Ethernet really an effective protocol for all of these things?  


I guess we're trading potential performance gains for reduced training costs / faster up skill-ing.  It even makes sense as we add so many layers by abstracting everything.  But imagine what could have been......


At this point I would go make myself a coffee, but the Power over Token Ring kettle is waiting for it's turn and my wife won't let the heater release the token.