High-Speed Ethernet Transport [Standards Topics]

Driven by increasing bandwidth demand from increasing broadband penetration, video, and other high-bandwidth services, the IEEE 802.3 working group has proposed a new project on higher speed Ethernet, chartered with development of standards for new interfaces with medium access control data rates of 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s. As the impact of this technology will not be confined to large data centers, this paper explores the overall network context for higher speed Ethernet and the related evolution of the optical transport network.