The 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium was originally established to develop 25, 50 and 100 Gbps Ethernet specifications. In order to reflect a new focus on higher-speed Ethernet technologies, the consortium rebranded itself as Ethernet Technology Consortium. The organization works with other industry groups and standards bodies to enhance the Ethernet specification to operate at new speeds that align with the rapidly evolving needs of the industry.
800GBASE-R specification
Ethernet Technology Consortium also announced the 800GBASE-R specification for 800 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE). The new specification introduces a new media access control (MAC) and Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS). It re-purposes two sets of the existing 400GbE logic from the IEEE 802.3bs standard with a few modifications in order to distribute the data across eight 106 Gb/s physical lanes.
Rob Stone, technical working group chair of the Ethernet Technology Consortium said,
“The intent with this work was to repurpose the standard 400GbE logic as much as possible to create an 800 GbE MAC and PCS specification with minimal overhead cost to users implementing multi-rate Ethernet ports. The 800 GbE specification is an exciting first announcement under the consortium’s new name, reflecting the true capability of the organization. We are proud of the hard work of our member companies in completing this specification.”