IEEE ratifies 40Gb and 100Gb Ethernet standard

THE IEEE Standards Association has ratified the IEEE Standard 802.3ba that covers 40 gigabit and 100 gigabit Ethernet (40GbE and 100GbE).

The Ethernet Alliance, along with the IEEE Standards Association and a task force working on higher speed Ethernet, are giving each other a pat on the back. They finally ratified IEEE 802.3ba after four years of working on 40Gb and 100Gb Ethernet technology standards.

The Ethernet Alliance tasked the teams with building standards for Ethernet pipes. In return, the IEEE Standards Association and task force produced a single architecture that supports up to 100GbE and a physical layer specification. The physical layer is used for "communication across backplanes, copper cabling, multimode fibre and single-mode fibre."

Back in 2006, the teams realised that bandwidth demand on switches was higher than that on servers. The answer was to create two speeds - 40GbE and 100GbE.

"Every jump in Ethernet speed has helped to meet the ever-growing bandwidth demands being placed upon the networking industry, and the ratification of the 40GbE and 100GbE standard is no different," said John D'Ambrosia, chair of the IEEE P802.3ba 40Gbps and 100Gbps Ethernet Task Force and director of the Ethernet-based Standards group of the CTO Office for Force10 Networks.

If you feel the need for speed, the Ethernet Alliance will be demonstrating 40GbE and 100GbE at the Supercomputing 2010 event in New Orleans from November 15-18, 2010. µ