On Thu, 18 Apr 2024 at 21:49, Aaron Gould <aaron1@gvtc.com> wrote:
Thanks. What "all the ethernet control frame juju" might you be referring to? I don't recall Ethernet, in and of itself, just sending stuff back and forth. Does anyone know if this FEC stuff I see concurring is actually contained in Ethernet Frames? If so, please send a link to show the ethernet frame structure as it pertains to this 400g fec stuff. If so, I'd really like to know the header format, etc.
The frames in FEC are idle frames between actual ethernet frames. So you recall right, without FEC, you won't see this idle traffic. It's very very good, because now you actually know before putting the circuit in production, if the circuit works or not. Lot of people have processes to ping from router-to-router for N time, trying to determine circuit correctness before putting traffic on it, which looks absolutely childish compared to FEC, both in terms of how reliable the presumed outcome is and how long it takes to get to that presumed outcome. -- ++ytti