Enterprise Networking Planet – Why 2.5 and 5 Gbps are the Next Ethernet Speeds
For most of the history of networking, bandwidth and data transmission speeds have steadily trended upwards, from 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps, then up to 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps. At the top end, 100 Gbps for carrier transport is now increasingly the norm.
Yet despite that upward trajectory of bandwidth standards, in 2014, for the first time in history, there has been downward pressure too. First there was the 25 GbE Consortium in July. This week the NBASE-T Alliance emerged, looking to build standards for 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps.
The NBASE-T Alliance boasts the participation of Cisco, Aquantia, Freescale and Xilinx. As to why there is a need for slower networking speeds, it all has to do with challenges that face organizations for 10 Gigabit Ethernet deployments.
