Higher Speed Ethernet Developments

Higher speed Ethernet interfaces with bitrates at 40 Gbit/s and 100 Gbit/s will play an increased role in mid-term development of data centers and networks due to the increase demand on transport capacity for packet oriented services and applications. In this contribution the development of higher speed interfaces will be reflected with respect to the different activities in the involved standardization bodies, and the native Ethernet and the Ethernet over OTN (optical transport network) approaches will be discussed. In future networks, higher speed interfaces will have strong impacts on the physical transmission, network architecture, network services, and network control resulting in advanced requirements.