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Re: MACsec SFP


From: Pieter Hulshoff <phulshof () aimvalley nl>
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 10:55:31 +0200

On 24-6-2014 10:21, Saku Ytti wrote:
For this solution to be marketable, it needs to be extremely cheap, as you're essentially competing against cheapest consumer grade switches to subrate a port. These ports would not be revenue generating, but almost invariably MGMT ports to legacy equipment, issues like QoS are not relevant, price point is. From switch POV, packets would be lost on-link when rate exceeds, and TCP would then decrease rate. So SFP would need to implement rudimentary buffering and packet dropping. And as always, it's best if there is some way for these to work without any configuration, as the moment you need to configure 1 thing, you need to develop provisioning system and potentially also configuration backups, which may in some organizations make solution prohibitively expensive compared to using small switch from existing vendor, which is already supported by systems

So basically a 1G connection to the switch, buffering with frame drop, and a tri-rate RJ45 connector? Sounds like something that could easily be built into our Chronos platform (http://www.aimvalley.com/portfolio_item/chronos-smart-sfp-tstransparent-synce-sfp/). We'd just have to remove the SyncE, and add the 10/100 Mb support.

Probably the most complex part is to build a business case for it to pitch to our management. Would anyone be willing to email me a price indication, and perhaps an indication of how many of these products would be needed? No obligations of course; just to get an idea of whether a business case can be built?

Kind regards,

Pieter Hulshoff


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