Industry events demonstrate Ethernet speeds

Ethernet's ability to evolve is a true testimony to its design. Starting at 10 Mbps in 1983, Ethernet now tops out at 100 Gbps with 400 Gbps in the works. During the week of June 22, 2015, the Ethernet community came together at the UNH-IOL in Durham NH for two events that kept Ethernet moving forward. I attended the events on June 23 and met with John D'Ambrosia, chair of the Ethernet Alliance and Jeff Lapak, Senior Manager, Ethernet Technologies at UNH-IOL. See the video below for the complete discussion.

The two events were a 40G/100G plugfest and a proof-of-concept test for 25 Gbps Ethernet PHY layer. Although 100G Ethernet uses 4x25 Gbps data lanes, the new 25 Gbps Ethernet (IEEE 802.3by) still needs testing because it uses different transmission methods. Figure 1 shows engineers at the plugfest.