IEEE Ethernet Study Group To Discuss 400Gbps Standard

The  Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standards body has announced the formation of a new study group that will explore the possibility of developing a new 400GBps Ethernet standard to support the ever increasing amount of traffic on networks.

The IEEE 802.3 standard for Ethernet study group will meet between 14 and 17 May in Victoria, British Columbia in Canada and is the first step towards collaboration on a proposal for development of the standard.

IEEE Ethernet standard

“It’s critical that we move now to create a plan for the Ethernet ecosystem to evolve beyond today’s capabilities, in order to accommodate the burgeoning bandwidth tsunami,” said John D’Ambrosia, chief Ethernet evangelist, CTO office at Dell and chair of the new group.

“The launch of this study group is the next critical step in evolving the IEEE 802.3 standard to stay ahead of industry’s needs.”

“It builds on two years of open efforts around inviting Ethernet’s vast array of stakeholders into the work of assessing and tackling the market’s emerging application requirements.”

The IEEE has claimed in its 802.3 Ethernet Bandwidth Assessment report that networks will need to support average annual growth rates of 58 percent, driven by an increasing number of users and new services such as video on demand and social media.If this trend continues, networks will need to be able to support capacity requirements of 1Tbps in 2015 and 10Tbps by 2020.

“Global bandwidth requirements are continuing to grow exponentially, and that makes it so important that the IEEE 802.3 standards community take proactive steps such as assessing needs and launching this study group,” said Alan Weckel, vice president enterprise and data centre market research at Dell’Oro Group. “Standards-based solutions are integral to maintaining business growth across the Ethernet ecosystem.”

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