After three years' work, the IEEE 802.3ae specification for 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) was approved as an IEEE standard on 13 June.
"Enterprises can now confidently deploy 10 Gigabit Ethernet in their corporate backbones, data centres and server farms to support mission-critical applications. Service providers and carriers can take advantage of Ethernet's cost effectiveness and deliver metro Ethernet services over SONET/SDH, dark fibre, or DWDM wavelengths," says Bruce Tolley, VP of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance (10GEA).
At both May's NetWorld+Interop in Las Vegas then SuperComm, 10GEA hosted public multi-vendor interoperability demonstrations. The latter involved the largest ever 10GbE network: a 200km end-to-end network comprised of 20 network devices and pieces of equipment, including systems, test equipment, components, fibre optic and cabling. It had 10 hops and included four of the seven port types specified in IEEE 802.3ae: 10GBASE-LR, 10GBASE-ER, 10GBASE-SR and 10GBASE-LW. Chip-to-chip communication over the IEEE 802.3ae XAUI interface - including a fifth port type, 10GBASE-LX4 - was also demonstrated.
- Since SuperComm a few performance tests (e.g. at the 10 Gig Inaugural Expo in Phoenix) have been cancelled in favour of further interoperability demonstrations.
www.10gea.org