Ethernet Alliance, UNH-IOL to hold plugfest for 2.5, 5 Gbps Ethernet service

The Ethernet Alliance and the Nbase-T Alliance announced a new collaborative effort they say is designed to accelerate mainstream deployment of 2.5Gbase-T and 5Gbase-T Ethernet. This technology multiplies network throughput of the more than 70 billion meters of Cat5e and Cat6 cabling sold throughout the last 13 years.

As part of the push to leverage this massive infrastructure, the Ethernet Alliance and Nbase-T plan to validate multi-vendor interoperability at a plugfest event scheduled for the week of Oct. 10 at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) in Durham, New Hampshire.

The IEEE P802.3bz standard defines 2.5Gbase-T and 5Gbase-T and offers a seamless upgrade to 1000base-T operation, which was introduced nearly 20 years ago. Service providers and enterprises that implement the new specification can get up to five times the speed without changing their cabling infrastructure required. In addition, 2.5GbE and 5GbE are well suited to interconnect to the next generation of higher-speed wireless networks based on IEEE 802.11ac. Release