40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet Technology Overview

The IEEE P802.3ba 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s Ethernet Task Force has been working on the development of 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet. In October, 2008, the Task Force took a major step forward, as it generated Draft 1.0 of the amendment to the IEEE Std 802.3- 2008 Ethernet standard. The Task Force has developed a single architecture capable of supporting both 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet, while producing physical layer specifications for communication across backplanes, copper cabling, multi-mode gigabit per second, and single-mode gigabit per second. This white paper provides an overview of the 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet project and the underlying technologies.