IEEE 400Gbit/s standard to combat internet bandwidth exhaustion

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is working on a new 400Gbit/s global standard for internet network connectivity.

The new standard will lead to hardware that will enable network speed on a single connection four times faster than the 100Gbit/s offered by hardware now being trialled and deployed by carriers.

The IEEE 400Gbit/s standards body was formed late last year, and the new standard is not due for three to four years.

With increasing use of social networking sites, and exposion of mobile data traffic, carriers and other firms such as Facebook need this technology to manage network requests.

Force10 Networks chief executive Henry Wasik gave details of the new standard being overseen by the IEEE in an interview with Computing.

"IEEE 400Gbit/s is a lot of bandwidth for a single network connection, and the reason they want to get started now is because of the cycle times to get these standards approved," said Wasik.

"There's a whole ecosystem of things that have to happen involving NIC vendors, fibre and cable vendors, and in order to realise that standard, all these people have to play together."

The chairman for the new IEEE standard will be Force10 Networks' CTO John D'Ambrosia, who was also the lead for the last big IEEE network standard, the 40-100Gbit/s 802.3ba ratified in June 2010.

Force10 Networks chief marketing officer Arpit Joshipura said the IEEE 40-100Gbit/s standard took five to seven years before ratification, "but we're expecting the IEEE 400Gbit/s to complete a lot sooner – in three to four years."

Last year, Facebook said that there was already a need for 1Tbit/s – 1,000 Gbit/s – connections in its datacentres.