Ethernet standard to be upgraded for 400Gbps - 1Tbps

The IEEE announced it's laying the groundwork for a new Ethernet standard that will likely support data transfer speeds between 1 gigabits per second and 1 terabit per second. IEEE engineers observed that the bandwidth associated with core networking tends to double very eighteen months, meaning customers will need 1Tbps connections by 2015 and 10Tbps by 2020. Full details at CNET.

A big part of the group's work will be figuring out whether 400Gbps or 1Tbps is a better approach, he said.

Right now, companies that build the networking hardware tend to favor the 400Gbps option, but the customers who use the network hardware favor the 1Tbps option, which is 2.5 times faster.

The key question will be figuring out whether terabit Ethernet is economically practical for the hardware companies involved, he D'Ambrosia said.

"People realize 400-gig Ethernet is technically and economically feasible. When you look at terabit ethernet, it's driven solely by demand," D'Ambrosia said. "People know there's a tsunami of data coming. It's basic math: terabit is more than 400-gig, so we want a terabit. That's nice, but one has to worry about the technical feasibility and the economic feasibility."