Ethernet Alliance in data center discussion

The Ethernet Alliance announced that this week it is participating in the BladeSystems Insight Conference in Savannah, Ga.

It's interesting that the alliance is playing up its participation in that event, which has more of a data center theme than a networking theme. But several members of the alliance - including Broadcom, Cisco, NetEffect and NetXen - will be making a presentation called "Is Ethernet the Unifying Fabric for the Next-Generation Data Center?"

Gee, I wonder what their answer will be?

The Ethernet Alliance is on a mission "to promote industry awareness, acceptance, and advancement of technology and products based on existing and emerging IEEE 802 Ethernet standards and their management." In other words, there's very little that the alliance feels is out of Ethernet's range of capabilities.

This Thursday, there will be a Blade Community Panel, moderated by Network World newsletter author and Nemertes founding partner Andreas Antonopoulos. It should be an interesting panel, bringing together Ethernet Alliance President Brad Booth and senior leaders of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Blade.org, the Blade Systems Alliance, the Distributed Management Task Force, and the Open Grid Forum (OGF).

Meanwhile, in related news, Tehuti Networks announced it will demonstrate its low-power 10 Gigabit Ethernet controllers and adapters at the Intel Developer Forum Beijing next week. Tehuti embeds a processor and two 10-Gigabit MACs into a single chip. It provides 10Gbps of throughput on each of the two ports, and is intended for places where low power and small size are required.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.