When 1 Gig just won't do

You may think that a connection of 10G bit/sec in the LAN is excessive, and you'd be right. But in many cases the same could be said of 1G bit/sec, frankly. So why stop there?

In March, the IEEE held a "call for interest" meeting about 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and substantial interest was expressed. Vendors suggested that the first place 10-Gigabit Ethernet could be deployed would be enterprise campus backbones.

If standards work begins this year, 10 Gigabit Ethernet will probably be standardized within the next two or three years. It will likely bear little relation to the original Ethernet, as it won't use the CSMA/CD method of detecting when packets are on the line, and when two packets are transmitted at once, causing a collision. In other words, it won't use a shared medium. The 10-Gigabit Ethernet standard also is unlikely to run over copper wires, sticking to fiber-optic lines only.

As for cost, vendors will try to price 10-Gigabit Ethernet products at less than 10 times the cost of Gigabit Ethernet.

Because the interest was significant, the IEEE 802.3 committee decided to form the Higher Speed Study Group, which will investigate 10-Gigabit Ethernet further.