Ethernet, the Road Ahead

Smart banking is the future of the financial services industry. But how do banks ensure their technology infrastructure can support consumers’ expectation for anytime, anywhere connectivity? Wu Jian explains how innovative high-speed fiber networks will support the demands of tomorrow’s mobile banking population.

Ethernet_Wu_JianMore than 700 million smartphones are used in China and the nation hosts 20 percent of the world’s mobile banking population. Many of its citizens are demanding everything be mobile — including banking.

Consumers' expectations for anytime, anywhere connectivity with the device of their choice has driven banks to re-engineer their services at the front end to deliver those expectations, which then drives them to re-engineer their back office processes to manage the avalanche of big data that is a result of all this demand.

Innovation Leads the Development of High-Speed Fiber Networks

One way commercial banks can address big data generated by mobility is to implement fiber optic communications. With the gradual enhancement of server performance and increased connections, data centers are moving beyond 10 gigabit per second (Gb/s) fiber connectivity to 40G, 100G and even beyond.

Given 10G Ethernet can no longer meet the demands of financial services institutions, and 100G is considered too expensive, the 25G and 50G Ethernet standards have emerged at the right time. Arista, Broadcom, Google, Microsoft and Mellanox established the 25G Ethernet Consortium in 2014, aiming to set up specific standards for 25G and 50G, thereby filling the gap between servers and switches.

I recently met with senior banking executives at the 6th Annual Cloud Computing Financial Institutions Forum in Shanghai where we discussed how they’re evolving technology infrastructure to meet energy and cost demands. With all the revolutionary changes to technology, banking leaders asked where Ethernet will go after 25G. Should it be 40G or 50G?

We discussed how wideband multimode fiber (WBMMF) could contribute to the next generation data centers, considering it fits the requirements of 100G and 400G and extends the adaptability of multimode data centers. CommScope even demonstrated the 100G multimode application up to 450 meters through SWDM based WBMMF.

Facing the growing needs from end customers for mobile banking and other business critical applications, WBMMF could be the preferred choice for commercial banks and the finance industry when it comes to delivering a great customer experience while retaining competitive advantage.

It continues to amaze me that regardless of where the network is today, it will be different tomorrow. How is your organisation preparing for the high-speed, high-bandwidth networks of the future? Join the conversation by clicking here.

Chart: IEEE's Multimode Fiber Based Technology Development Roadmap (issued in 2015)