At OFC 2015 (March 24-26) in Los Angeles, the Ethernet Alliance released its 2015 Ethernet Roadmap.

Four new speeds – 2.5 Gigabit per second (Gb/s); 5 Gb/s; 25 Gb/s; and 400 Gb/s Ethernet – are currently in development by the IEEE, while the industry is also considering 50Gb/s and 200 Gb/s Ethernet.

The Ethernet Alliance says it developed the 2015 Ethernet Roadmap to bring clarity to this mix of speeds, application spaces, and market drivers in the near-term, as well as explore speeds beyond 2020 which could be 800 Gb/s; 1 Terabyte per second (Tb/s); 1.6 Tb/s; 6.4 Tb/s; and 10 Tb/s Ethernet.

“Ethernet is constantly evolving and diversifying into new markets and application spaces.”

“Today’s Ethernet landscape is vastly different than in years past. Ethernet’s growing diversification is happening from within as people seek to bring the benefits of Ethernet to a multitude of different market spaces. It’s no longer being driven by speed increases in just factors of 10,”