400G: Why now?

A new technical brief from the Ethernet Alliance seeks to help interested parties "understand the urgency" for 400 Gb/s Ethernet speeds. "Bandwidth growth is unrelenting everywhere across Ethernet networking," states the paper. "Every day, more users are more quickly accessing the Internet in more ways, to utilize more applications and consume more content that demands more bandwidth every day. More, more, more."

Related: IEEE study group to explore 400 Gb/s Ethernet

See also: Ethernet bandwidth: How fast is enough?

The document continues, "Consequently, fundamental bottlenecks are appearing everywhere throughout the Ethernet ecosystem, and the future holds only more mobile, more video, more devices, more data and who knows what new unforeseen pressures that innovation in technologies and applications holds."

The brief explains how, "with no less than a bandwidth tsunami intensifying, the global Ethernet ecosystem is moving now to create a plan to evolve beyond today’s 100 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) capabilities, in order to enable and provide solutions to the network and data center operators."

View/Download the technical brief.