Spent 15 days without any unwanted travel - getting back to the basics of research.. feels good.
On the same line of thought - strip all of Ethernet's powers, kill STP, remove IPG, simplify the PCS, make the MII more user oriented, simplify the SERDES in the PCS - things should become easier.
Bob Metcalfe spoke at this year's OFC on terabit Ether. While that seems a way off, one of my students investigating 100 GE, seems to be convinced that the 500 odd parallel lines that run in from the MAC to do 100 GE is an overkill. And I do agree with him. It seems we have come along in a circle - started with packet switching, WDM, GigE, cloud computing and now to sustain this cloud we need a better way of doing Ethernet.
On the same line of thought - we keep reading and hearing about "proper layering". To me that is real BS. To me that means that people who do not know about other layers can safely survive in their cozy jobs by doing proper layering. In fact layering is an overkill - time to redesign the damn network..
