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Site Editor Jeff Caruso helps you make sense of the evolving world of LANs and routers.
You may have seen news of the recent disagreements within the IEEE's Higher Speed Study Group; now an alliance has organized a push for 100 Gigabit Ethernet.
Network World's Jim Duffy summed up the controversy in a recent story. As he notes, it seemed like the group had settled on 100Gbps as the speed to shoot for, beating out 40Gbps, which was also proposed.
But more recently, there has been some disagreement over whether 40G should be pursued after all, and if so, whether it should be done within the same group in the IEEE. The disagreement has stalled the study group, and it hopes to reach a decision and move forward next month.
Against this backdrop, this week at the NXTcomm 2007 trade show a group calling itself the "Road to 100G" Alliance appeared, with a Web site. The group explains its goals this way:
"The charter of the Road to 100G Alliance is to provide a framework that encourages the development of comprehensive solutions that are optimized for high-density communications applications. The Alliance plans to provide ongoing education, application support and common reference design data to accelerate the deployment of high performance enterprise, metro, carrier, and long haul network solutions. The Road to 100G Alliance also plans to sponsor programs, events and communications relating to the validation of these advanced networking platforms."
Founding members are Bay Microsystems, Enigma Semiconductor, IDTTM, IP Infusion, and Lattice Semiconductor.
The Ethernet Alliance - the industry alliance with a large membership that pushes for Ethernet adoption in just about every networking capacity - has remained silent on the issue, ever since issuing a press release in December that the IEEE group had decided on 100Gbps.
Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.
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Comments (11)
The 100G controversyBy Anonymous on June 14, 2007, 12:36 pmGee....I don't remember a 40Mbps standard when the industry evolved from 10 Mbps to 100Mbps?!?!?!? Re: Controversy threatens 100G standards work and Group pushes...
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Rules of Progress?By T. Tinsley on June 14, 2007, 12:56 pmI have worked as a consultant and systems integrator for over a decade. My clients range from "Mom & Pop" retailers to IBM Global Services. Every time I have...
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Sensational JournalismBy Observer on June 14, 2007, 1:47 pmA few facts would have been helpful to the article. Why the 100G camp thinks they are done. Why the 100G camp thinks the 40G camp is not done. Why the 40G camp...
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I think the nearly-halfBy Omar on June 14, 2007, 2:04 pmI think the nearly-half speed proposed (40G) could be like a patch. Why not join forces for a much higher speed that can fully address all the current and medium...
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100G is better, but 40G is less riskyBy Michael on June 14, 2007, 3:31 pmIt looks to me like the typical struggle that takes place when advancing any technology. It will take longer to get a working 100G standard than to get a 40G standard...
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100G is needed first ..By anonymous on June 14, 2007, 9:28 pm"The 40G people don't want to wait that long ..." The irony of the situation is that 100G (switch uplink) is needed earlier than 40G (server uplink). Customers and...
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