Tyco Electronics

The IEEE NesCom recommended the approval of P802.3ba on December 4th and the Standards Board approved it the morning of December 5th.  While the IEEE 802.3 Plenary had approved this project a few months ago, the NesCom recommendation and Standards Board approval are the final steps in authorization of the project.  Their objectives include two data rates: a 100 Gigabit Ethernet aggregation application alongside a 40 Gigabit Ethernet application for servers and storage.  Currently, the objectives include providing the following physical layer specifications for 40 Gb/s operation: at least 100m on OM3 MMF, at least 10m over a copper cable assembly and at least 1m over a backplane.  For 100 Gb/s operation, the physical layer specification objectives include: at least 40km on SMF, at least 10km on SMF, at least 100m on OM3 MMF, and at least 10m over a copper cable assembly.  There is still a lot to do - the current timeline shows a projected completion of the standard in mid-2010.