PISCATAWAY, New Jersey, — The world of Ethernet communications just got faster and more connected. IEEE Standard 802.3ae? a new standard from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, extends the speed of Ethernet operations by an order of magnitude to 10 Gbit/s and makes provision for linking Ethernet local area networks (LANs) to municipal and wide area networks (MANs and WANs). The standard reflects Ethernet's ongoing evolution toward higher speed as network and Internet traffic continue to expand dramatically.

IEEE 802.3ae? "Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 10 Gb/s Operation," was approved by the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) Standards Board on June 13. Work on the standard began in early 1999 and has involved hundreds of industry participants from around the world.

The new standard, which offers a straightforward upgrade path for Gigabit Ethernet backbones, is specified for fiber optic media and uses full duplex operation. Its optical interfaces provide options for single mode fibers at distances up to 40 km and for multimode fibers at distances to 300 m. The new standard uses the same management architecture as appears in earlier Ethernet standards. In enterprise applications, this will allow most users to leverage their existing Ethernet investments when switching to 10 Gbit/s operation through the reuse of their installed architecture, software and cabling.

The standard reaches beyond Ethernet's traditional LAN space and enables easy connection to other networking technologies. An optional WAN physical layer allows 10 Gbit/s Ethernet links to be extended over MAN and WAN distances. The WAN PHY maps the Ethernet frames into a SONET/SDH (Synchronous Optical Network/ Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) payload. As a result, service providers can create high-speed, longer-distance Ethernet links at a competitive cost by making use of deployed infrastructure.

"The standard fosters end-to-end network convergence at high speed," says Bob Grow, Chair of the IEEE 802.3 Working Group and a Principal Architect in the Intel Communications Group. "As the next logical step in speed for the IEEE 802.3 standard, it expands the opportunities for current and emerging high-bandwidth applications."

Jonathan Thatcher, IEEE 802.3ae?Task Force Chair, adds that, "the push to 10 Gbit/s is especially important for the Internet, since nearly all its traffic starts or ends on Ethernet nodes. In essence, the new standard lets users choose Ethernet speeds from 10 Mbit/s to 10 Gbit/s and still have a familiar management model throughout and consistent bridging between networks at different rates."

IEEE 802.3ae?was sponsored by the IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee of the IEEE Computer Society. For further information on IEEE 802 standards projects, visit http://www.ieee802.org.

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