On 24-6-2014 11:09, Saku Ytti wrote:
On (2014-06-24 10:55 +0200), Pieter Hulshoff wrote:
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 Yes, also similar solution for 10GE SFP+.
What about XFP? Any need for that as well?
Not sure what price should be 50EUR for 1GE and 100EUR for 10GE definitely would be marketable, but they likely could cost more. Like always, market increases as price decreases, so it might be possible to push NRE costs to early adopters then price drop to reach wider market.
Price would indeed depend quite a bit on the volume, since design and production cost will need to be recovered.
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? I'm not ready to commit, because timing is critical here, as such part does not exist, people have found some solution, solution usually means retaining the previous-generation switch in pop, just to subrate the new-generation ports. But this uses lot of electricity usually and it wastes rack space, so it might be easy to show how in just electricity costs you can recover costs in under a year. If switch takes 150W, that's approximately 150 EUR per year for electricity. If SFP takes 1W, yearly savings on electricity alone are 149EUR. MTBF is probably better, due to no separate PSU and ability to capitalize on redundant PSU of host.
I'm not looking for commitments in any way; just an indication of how often people need a solution like this to get an idea of the type of volumes we're looking at, and a reasonable selling price. As written above: design and production cost (including test, validation, factory, etc.), and reseller profit margins will need to be recovered, so if I'm to convince our management that we should develop this product I'll need to build some kind of business case for it. Of course we'll also contact our regular customer base about these matters, but I would welcome feedback from this list as well. Kind regards, Pieter Hulshoff