10 Gigabit Ethernet standard approved

Phil Hochmuth, Network World   Today’s Top Stories   or  Other Software Stories  

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June 14, 2002 (Network World) -- The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.'s (IEEE) 802.3 Ethernet standards group approved the final draft of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard this week, clearing the way for vendors to begin shipping nonproprietary 10G bit/sec. products.
Although products based on 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology have been on the market for almost a year, the official go-ahead gives companies and carriers assurance that products based on the standard can easily interoperate -- the hallmark of Ethernet technology, standards crafters said.
The latest iteration of the Ethernet standard, 10 Gigabit Ethernet moves data over single- and multi-mode fiber 10 times faster than the current Gigabit Ethernet standard and with a range of between 65 meters and 40 kilometers.
Three years in the making, the IEEE 802.3ae standard was more difficult to create than previous Gigabit Ethernet and Fast Ethernet standards efforts, said Jonathan Thatcher, chairman of the IEEE 802.3ae Working Group and chief technology officer at Worldwide Packets.
"Technically, no question, when we started this project we knew that optics [or physical connectivity] would be the most challenging aspect because we didn't have any other technologies to borrow from," Thatcher said. Whereas Fast Ethernet borrowed much of its parts from the Fiber Distributed Data Interface and Gigabit Ethernet stole from Fibre Channel, 10 Gigabit Ethernet pretty much had to start from scratch.
This led to a few bumps along the way, Thatcher said, and his group missed the target date for approval by three months. Stumbling blocks included delays in getting standard-specified optical components from parts makers and problems with the test methodology for clocking 10G bit/sec. Ethernet accurately.
Vendors with 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches either shipping or announced include Cisco Systems Inc., Enterasys Networks Inc., Extreme Networks Inc., Foundry Networks Inc., Nortel Networks Corp. and Force10 Networks Inc. These switch vendors, along with 18 other component and testing companies, displayed 10 Gigabit Ethernet interoperability at the recent Networld+Interop and SuperComm trade shows.
With prices hovering around $40,000 to $100,000 per port, 10 Gigabit Ethernet will remain mostly a carrier technology for the next few years, Thatcher said. But this is a unique aspect about the technology, he added.
"One of the things that's interesting about this project is that ... this is the first technology the [IEEE] did in Ethernet where we specifically designed it to go beyond the boundaries of the LAN," he said. Even when he was involved in the crafting of the Gigabit standard in the late 1990s, the standard was always seen as a LAN technology. "10 Gigabit Ethernet was designed to take Ethernet end to end over a wide-area network."
With the standards process nowcomplete, Thatcher gives credit to the 300-plus engineers from dozens of companies who developed the technology.
"I would say this is one of the best teams, if not the best team, ever organized to do a standards project," he said. "Guys who worked on this stuff put in more time than their respective companies know about, and certainly more time than their companies would have been willing to fund."

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