8/21/2006 -- Hang on to your mounting brackets, because Ethernet is poised to go to plaid, in Spaceballs-speak: Technology visionaries are already talking up the successor to 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Will it be a 100 Gigabit pipe -- or something even bigger?

Planning now for next-gen Gigabit Ethernet isn't that all that far-fetched, argues Glen Hunt, a principal analyst for carrier infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis. For one thing, he notes, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is already seeing mainstream deployment within the fabric of carrier, enterprise and even data center infrastructures, while Gigabit Ethernet access links and 10 Gigabit Ethernet network and interconnect trunks are the cornerstones of most next-generation broadband infrastructures.

So it's only natural that tech gurus -- and, increasingly, mainstream planners -- would start to think about what comes after 10 GigE.

One such organization is the Ethernet Alliance, which -- in conjunction with the IEEE -- has formed an advanced study group (the imaginatively titled Higher Speed Study Group, or HSSG) to prepare for the transition to hyper-gigabit standards well before actual deployments are feasible.

The HSSG is just the beginning, Hunt predicts. "As the next-generation Ethernet infrastructures grow, the next hurdle will be to address the aggregation of the 10 GigE trunks and circuits in a manner that retains the interoperability and compelling economics that have propelled Ethernet from a LAN technology to the major network infrastructure technology that it is today," he says.

Other organizations that are at least exploring the possibility of hyper-gigabit Ethernet include the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association (OIDA), which has suggested 100 Gigabit Ethernet as one potential standard. At a meeting this month, Hunt says, the OIDA plans to explore the possibility of achieving 100 Gigabit performance from both a systems as well as a technology perspective. "[Such planning must] include protocols, transceiver technology, signal conditioning and many other aspects related to delivering reliable and affordable solutions," he points out, stressing that industry collaboration -- even at so theoretical a juncture -- is a must.

"Any solution will also depend on the router and switch vendors' ability to handle the base technology as well as the service creation and delivery aspects to provide value to service providers and data center operators. New mechanisms for bandwidth management and quality of service will need to be implemented," Hunt indicates. "Equipment vendors will need to evaluate and test their architectures or devise new ones to support higher levels of performance. Currently, many of the next-generation IP core and high-capacity Ethernet routers support 40 Gigabit performance per slot; several tout that they are 100 Gigabit-ready." -Stephen Swoyer