IEEE votes 100G as the next Ethernet speed, scheduled for 2010

We're confident these off kilter batteries have been keeping the IEEE quite busy in recent months, but they've apparently made time to agree upon the next major Ethernet standard, and have raised the bar way above the rumored "40Gbps" level by dropping the hammer on 100G. If you're hoping to pick up some newfangled NIC and take advantage of these crazy new speeds anytime soon, fuhgetaboutit. The IEEE's High Speed Study Group (HSSG) has quite a bit of work to go, including the actual assembly of a new task force, which will "work to standardize 100G Ethernet over distances as far as six miles over single-mode fiber optic cabling and 328 feet over multimode fiber." John D'Ambrosia, chair of the IEEE HSSG, has admitted that the need for quicker (and larger) pipes is imminent, especially considering the growing trend in downloadable media and Web 2.0 applications, but anticipates the forming of 100G to "not be too great a challenge." While we're most definitely writing anything these folks say in regard to promptness off, we're admittedly glad the gurus behind the scenes feel this next step up should happen rather smoothly, but the IEEE still doesn't think a "finalized standard" will go live "until 2009 or 2010."

[Via Shashdot]

[Veritas II @ Dec 6th 2006 5:21AM]

Shashdot?

[Olivier @ Dec 6th 2006 5:37AM]

With those kind of speeds we soon won't be needing any other types of cable for television or computer monitors. You should just be able to hook up your monitor to the network and voila!!

[tekdroid @ Dec 6th 2006 5:42AM]

real-world speed: 56kbps ;)

[Mark @ Dec 6th 2006 7:03AM]

What we really need is faster hard drives. I've got a "mere" 100 Mbps symmetrical fiber optic Internet connection to my house here in Japan, and my computer can't handle the speed. In other words, uTorrent forcibly slows down the speed because the hard drive can't write fast enough and the cache runs out so it gives me a "disk overloaded" message and slows down. Granted, I'm using a laptop, but still the fastest I got (at least on uTorrent) sustained speed was only 4MBytes/s, and I know the connection can easily go to 10MBytes/s. So start giving us faster hard drives so we can actually USE our connections to their full potential.

[John Bibbs @ Dec 6th 2006 9:27AM]

The guys from IEEE were at the hotel where I am the IT tech a few weeks back discussing new 802.11 standards... Good stuff, crazy speeds. I agree with Mark though, unless we get actual hardware that is capable of keeping up then it won't matter if you have 100G or hell 100TiB for that matter.

[mb @ Dec 6th 2006 11:19AM]

I spy an eSATA cage.

FYI, at least for a few years, this won't be for single system interconnects, it will be for trunking, just like every new Ethernet speed jump.

[Brett Majesky @ Dec 7th 2006 7:53AM]

Like the article says, this is for backbone cabling and long haul circuitry. This is not something that you'd see any time soon built into your motherboard. And this will help out a lot. I mean, the last time I set up a network, we grouped six gigabit fiber ports together on a Cisco 6500 to create a 6Gb etherchannel just so it could talk to one of the other core switches. And even that guy was coming close to being saturated. Sure, we're never going to max out a 100Gb internet connection at home, but think about at, say, an ISP where they have a few thousand users online all at the same time maxing out their capabilities on bit torrent.