* 10GBase-LRM close to finish line
Last month the IEEE task force creating a standard for running 10 Gigabit Ethernet over FDDI-grade fiber-optic lines didn’t meet as scheduled.
It turns out the group didn’t have to – apparently the latest draft of the standard, 4.0, emerged unscathed with no new comments and no new disapproving votes.
The effort had been running behind the original schedule. Minutes from the group’s May meeting noted that the project had taken nine months longer than the original plan. The group formed as a task force, dubbed IEEE 802.3aq, in May 2004 and had hoped to complete its work by the end of 2005.
The next step is for the publication to gain various IEEE approvals, but with no more work for the group as a whole to do, the standard is essentially done.
The resulting specification, called 10GBase-LRM, is expected to be an improvement over the previous standard for 10 Gigabit over multimode, 10GBase-LX4. The hope was that companies would be able to upgrade to 10 Gigabit Ethernet without having to replace the multimode fiber they already had in place.
Along with the copper 10 Gigabit Ethernet effort for 10GBase-T – the standard was ratified earlier this summer – vendors are hoping that 10 Gigabit will now more easily be brought to the masses. With 10GBase-LRM, they are already ready, some having announced components supporting the standard months ago.
Congratulations to the IEEE task force on achieving the milestone.
