The IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standards group has approved the final draft of the 10Gb Ethernet standard, paving the way for vendors to begin shipping 10Gbps products.
The standard ensures that products, many of which have been on the market for up to a year, will now interoperate using the IEEE standards. The IEEE is a global non-profit technical standards organisation.
The Ethernet standard, which has taken almost three years to finalise, is capable of moving data up to 10 times faster than current Gigabit Ethernet over distances up to 40km.
Much of the technology involved in 10Gb Ethernet is constructed from scratch, unlike previous Ethernet standards which borrow heavily from existing technologies such as Fibre Channel.
The 10Gb Ethernet standard was originally planned for approval three months ago, but according to IEEE 802.3 working group chairman Jonathan Thatcher, the need to develop standards from the ground up instead of borrowing had delayed the original approval plans.
Although the 10Gb standard has only just been approved, many vendors such as Cisco and Nortel have already shipped 10Gb products in advance of the final approval of the standard.
However, benefits for end-users will be some time coming largely because of the technology`s prohibitively high price tag of between $40 000 and $100 000 per port. Most industry commentators expect the technology to remain a carrier grade technology for at least another two years.
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