NBASE-T Alliance Hosts First Plugfest

Conducts Interoperability Testing on 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T Products From Over a Dozen Members

BEAVERTON, OR – August 25, 2015 – The NBASE-T Alliance, an industry-wide cooperative effort to promote the development of 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet (2.5GE and 5GE) over twisted pair copper cabling (2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T), today announced it will host its first plugfest on September 8 and 9, 2015 at Granite River Labs (GRL) in Santa Clara, Calif.

More than a dozen alliance members are expected to participate demonstrating the interoperability of 2.5G/5GBASE-T products such as wireless access points, switches, network interface cards, cabling and test equipment. Some of the participating companies include: Amphenol (NYSE:APH), Aquantia, Aruba Networks, an HP company, Cisco, CommScope (NASDAQ:COMM), Fluke Networks, Freescale (NYSE:FSL), Intel, Microsemi (NASDAQ:MSCC), Panduit, SpeedTech, Spirent (LON:SPT), and Tehuti Networks.

“The NBASE-T Alliance continues to build consensus around the implementation of specifications and products that support 2.5G and 5GBASE-T,” said LK Bhupathi, chair of the Marketing Working Group, NBASE-T Alliance. “This plugfest will enable vendors to establish interoperability between products that implement the NBASE-T specification – a specification that is consistent with the technical baselines adopted by the IEEE 802.3bz Task Force. We will continue our efforts to provide solid solutions to customers who desire to begin immediately deploying 2.5G and 5G Ethernet in their networks.”

According to the Dell’Oro Group, the enterprise edge market, which comprises enterprise-class wireless LAN (WLAN) and campus Ethernet switches, is expected to exceed $17 billion by 2019.  Dell’Oro expects that Ethernet switching will account for approximately 60 percent of this $17 billion-dollar market, with the rest coming from WLANs and access management software.  In addition, the firm expects 2.5G and 5GE to account for roughly 25 percent of all Ethernet edge ports.

“We saw the very first 2.5/5.0 GE port shipments begin to ramp at the end of June, and expect volumes to begin rising significantly in the third quarter of this year as multiple product lines begin to ramp,” said Chris DePuy, vice president of enterprise edge research at Dell’Oro Group.  “The benefit of increased throughput without replacing cable is creating an entirely new Ethernet market to serve the demands of the campus environment.  This benefit could push port counts over 1 million in only a year.”

About the NBASE-T Alliance
The NBASE-T Alliance is a consortium focused on developing and deploying products that support NBASE-T technology and NBASE-T specifications. The specifications define the transport of 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet at up to 100 meters using the large, installed base of copper cabling, such as Cat5e and Cat6, found in enterprise networks. More than 30 companies have joined the alliance, representing all major facets of enterprise networking infrastructure such as wireless access points, Ethernet switching, and computing, as well as the necessary semiconductor components required to deliver these applications including physical layer ICs (PHYs), processors, cabling and connectors, test equipment (cable and system), controllers, switches, FPGAs and Power-over-Ethernet ICs. The alliance was founded in 2014 and its current board of directors is composed of representatives from Aquantia, Cisco, Freescale, Intel, Marvell, Qualcomm and Xilinx. Visit us at www.nbaset.org or connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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