The Category 6 Consortium (www.category6.org) has published a paper describing the IEEE's current examination of the feasibility of transmitting 10 Gigabit Ethernet traffic over twisted-pair copper cabling.

The paper summarizes the IEEE's call-for-interest meeting on the topic, at which technical, economic, and market feasibility were discussed. At that meeting, 110 participants expressed support for the effort. A 10GBase-T study group was formed; that group will evaluate the feasibility of standardizing 10 Gbits/sec data rates over UTP horizontal cabling up to distances of 100 meters.

The study group had its first meeting January 9-10, and has expressed a desire to create a protocol that will run over as much of the installed base of cabling systems as possible. The Category 6 Consortium is addressing this issue because it believes that by 2005, 80% of new UTP cabling installations will be Category 6-thereby making it an appropriate medium for a protocol intended to run over the installed base.

The Category 6 Consortium is a working group whose mission is to create market and industry awareness, as well as demand, for cabling systems and components based on the Category 6 cabling standard.