100 Gigabit Ethernet

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This article contains information about a scheduled or expected future product.
It may contain preliminary information that does not reflect the final version of the product.

40 Gigabit Ethernet, or 40GbE, and 100 Gigabit Ethernet, or 100GbE, are Ethernet standards presently under early development by the IEEE. The fastest existing standard is 10 Gigabit Ethernet. In late November 2006, an IEEE study group agreed to target 100 Gbit/s Ethernet as the next version of the technology.

1 Description
2 Objectives
3 Implementation
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

Description

The IEEE 802.3 Higher Speed Study Group (HSSG) has adopted several objectives which direct their current work. These include 100GbE optical fiber Ethernet standards of both at least 100 metres (328 ft) and at least 10 kilometres (6.2 mi), full-duplex operation only, and using current frame format and size standards.

In July 2007, the study group presented a Project Authorization Request (PAR) to the 802 Standards Executive Committee for a new IEEE 802.3ba standard which includes both 40 GBit/s and 100 GBit/s data rates. The lower speed will run over a variety of media. The higher speed will require single-mode fiber but will allow distances of up to 40 km (25 mi)^[1].

On December 5, 2007 the study group became a task force and the IEEE formally established IEEE 802.3ba as the designation for a 100 Gbit/s and 40 Gbit/s Ethernet communications standard.

Objectives

The objectives of the task force are to:

Support full-duplex operation only
Preserve the 802.3 / Ethernet frame format utilizing the 802.3 MAC
Preserve minimum and maximum FrameSize of current 802.3 standard
Support a BER better than or equal to $10 - 12$ at the MAC/PLS service interface
Provide appropriate support for OTN
Support a MAC data rate of 40 Gbit/s
Provide Physical Layer specifications which support 40 Gbit/s operation over:
- at least 10 km on SMF
- at least 100 m on OM3 MMF
- at least 10 m over a copper cable assembly
- at least 1 m over a backplane
Support a MAC data rate of 100 Gbit/s
Provide Physical Layer specifications which support 100 Gbit/s operation over:
- at least 40 km on SMF
- at least 10 km on SMF
- at least 100 m on OM3 MMF
- at least 10 m over a copper cable assembly

Implementation

The 100 m OM3 objective is likely to be supported by parallel ribbon cable with 10GBASE-SR like optics (40GBASE-SR4 and 100GBASE-SR10). The 1 m backplane objective with 4 lanes of 10GBASE-KR type PHYs (40GBASE-KR4). The 10 and 40 km 100G objectives with four wavelengths of 25G optics (100GBASE-LR4 and 100GBASE-ER4) and the 10 km 40G objective with with four wavelengths of 10G optics (40GBASE-LR4).^[2]

In February 2008, Opnext Inc. and Hitachi Ltd. demonstrated the first lasers to support this new high-speed standard.^[3]