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The Road To Terabit Ethernet

stinkymountain writes "Pre-standard 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit Ethernet products — server network interface cards, switch uplinks and switches — are expected to hit the market later this year. Standards-compliant products are expected to ship in the second half of next year, not long after the expected June 2010 ratification of the 802.3ba standard. Despite the global economic slowdown, global revenue for 10G fixed Ethernet switches doubled in 2008, according to Infonetics. There is pent-up demand for 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit Ethernet, says John D'Ambrosia, chair of the 802.3ba task force in the IEEE and a senior research scientist at Force10 Networks. 'There are a number of people already who are using link aggregation to try and create pipes of that capacity,' he says. 'It's not the cleanest way to do things...(but) people already need that capacity.' D'Ambrosia says even though 40/100G Ethernet products haven't arrived yet, he's already thinking ahead to terabit Ethernet standards and products by 2015. 'We are going to see a call for a higher speed much sooner than we saw the call for this generation' of 10/40/100G Ethernet, he says."

3 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Physics? by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Funny

    I mean at some point doesn't it become impossible to move electrons or modulate data any faster?

    Nah, at that point you just place the whole ethernet infrastructure within a subspace field, modulate the deflector dish a little bit and you'll be off and running.

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  2. Re:More data forces the need for more bandwidth by bcmm · · Score: 5, Funny

    Being able to push more content, move more data, combined with data files being that much larger, is the real driving force behind this push.

    +1 Insightful; until now I never truly understood why people wanted more bandwidth.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  3. By 2015... by castironpigeon · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...we'll be able to use our monthly bandwidth allowance in under one second. Hooray?

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    mmmm...forbidden donut