10-Gigabit Ethernet off to a running start
 
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The first hurdles have been cleared for 10-Gigabit Ethernet, and the technology is about to take the next step toward standardization in the IEEE.
The 10-Gigabit project is expected to be authorized in January, paving the way for the first official meeting of the 10-Gigabit Ethernet task force, in March. The eventual specification is expected to receive the designation IEEE 802.3ae.
One major obstacle was settling on a speed. There was a debate raging in the IEEE's high-speed study group over whether the actual speed should be exactly 10G bit/sec or 9.584640G bit/sec. The latter speed matches the payload rate of OC-192 Sonet, and its proponents pushed for that speed because they want to use a Sonet-based infrastructure to transmit 10-Gigabit Ethernet over wide-area networks.
The group compromised a bit, deciding in September to specify a 10-Gigabit media access control layer. As I understand it, this still allows vendors to build some logic into the physical layer to adjust between the 10G bit/sec running in a LAN and the 9.584640G bit/sec of Sonet. Never fear; this will likely be transparent to enterprise users.
