The Ethernet Technology Consortium (ETC) recently announced a new and 800 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) standard. As per its official statement, the new standard introduces a new media access control (MAC) and physical coding sublayer (PCS).
Technically speaking, the 800GbE uses eight 106Gb/s lanes to connect to a single MAC. Operating at 800Gb/s although it should be noted that the achieved speed is executed through two modified 400Gb/s PCSs.
One thing that should be made clear is that the new 800GbE standard won’t have a direct effect on your home PC anytime soon. As it stands, almost all current PCs and notebooks support 1GbE LAN and only a handful support the higher 10GbE speeds, albeit at a relatively steep price for the latter.
On a lighter note, the announcement of the 800GbE standard has also forced the ETC to perform an unexpected action: changing its name. Prior to this, the ETC was officially known as the 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium and was originally established to develop 25, 50, and 100Gbps connections. Also, the consortium says that the name change is reflective of its goal towards a “new focus on higher-speed Ethernet technologies”.
To that end, you can read the ETC’s techno-ramblings on the new 800GbE standard here, if you want to learn how it works. And while still in its infancy, the ETC has already roped in companies like Google, Microsoft, and Cisco among many other, as part of the consortium.
