The Ethernet Alliance, an organization driving awareness, acceptance and advancement of Ethernet technology and products, this week announced the formation of a data center subcommittee.

The subcommittee is chartered to be an Ethernet reference and resource for IT professionals with data center initiatives (Compare data center products.) The subcommittee is chaired by Anthony Faustini of Cisco; the marketing chair is Sunil Ahluwalia of Intel.

Ethernet is gaining increasing momentum in data center applications due to the rapidly declining price of 10G Ethernet ports, advancements in tunneling FibreChannel traffic through an Ethernet fabric, the specification for a "loss-less" Ethernet standard, and virtualization and energy efficiency imperatives. The price of a 10G Ethernet port, for example, is expected to be less than $1,900 this quarter, from $4,700 in the second quarter of 2006, according to Dell'Oro Group.

The subcommittee was formed to address the demands on Ethernet networking in the data center, the alliance says.

In addition to assisting users and developers of Ethernet, the data  center subcommittee will identify areas where technical work may be needed to provide enhancements, the alliance says. Subcommittee members will work with the IEEE 802 task force and T11 participants to promote emerging standards for data center networking, including IEEE 802.1 Data Center Bridging and Congestion Notification, multiple IEEE 802.3 projects, and T11 FC-BB-5 for Fibre Channel over Ethernet.

The subcommittee also plans to sponsor private interoperability tests through third-party facilities, and will produce white papers and educational material.