The Future of Ethernet

Almost 35 years ago, the concept of an Ethernet network was born and almost 25 years ago the DIX (Digital- Intel-Xerox) specification led the march for an Ethernet standard. In the last 15 years, Ethernet has transitioned from a half duplex protocol to a full duplex protocol and has increased its bandwidth capabilities by three orders of magnitude. This paper looks at what the future holds for Ethernet, and what is driving those developments. Index Terms — 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 100 Gigabit Ethernet, 10GBASE-T, 10GBASE-LRM, virtualization, virtual servers. I. INTRODUCTION Ethernet has become the dominant networking technology in the Enterprise LAN environment. Its success has been based on a fairly simple paradigm of making low-cost, high- speed interconnect available from a multitude of vendors and having the equipment interoperate reliably. It is a simple concept, but not always easy to perform especially as the technology pushes the Shannon's limit of the transport medium. Ethernet's early growth was largely due to the desire to network computers in a business environment. The ability to exchange emails and files with colleagues inside a corporation permitted faster and less costly forms of communication. With the advent of the Internet, corporations could not only exchange information amongst their employees, but also with their potential clients. The ability to network a larger community helped increase the demand for networking and computer equipment in the corporate and consumer markets. Neither the Internet nor the increasing growth of data, both corporate and personal, will wane anytime soon. As a matter of fact, all reports show that the growth of data continues to double year on year. Whether it is that new 16 megapixel camera or the 16 megabyte presentation, end users have grown accustomed to the ever-increasing size of their data. And while doing so, they have also come to expect their applications to run faster and their data to arrive quicker. Hence, the explosive and continued growth of the Internet.