Make no mistake about it, Ethernet in 2023 remains the foundation of all modern networking and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

At the 2023 Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC) this week in San Diego, the Ethernet Alliance had a multi-vendor interoperability demonstration highlighting the capabilities of the modern specification spanning from 10-gigabit Ethernet (GbE) to 800 GbE. The interoperability demonstration included technologies from 18 different vendors showing how Ethernet technologies work across different hardware solutions.

The Ethernet Alliance also spent time highlighting its roadmap, which sees continued advancement in the speed, reliability, and use cases for the networking protocol across multiple sectors. The goal of the organization is not to invent new standards, but rather to help foster their adoption and deployment in an interoperable approach.

[caption id="attachment_127505" align="alignnone" width="651"] The Ethernet Alliance roadmap for 2023 shows a diversity of use cases and deployments.[/caption]

"If you think about the journey from invention to deployment, what we do is we try to show that the technology does work and it is mature enough that it can be deployed," Peter Jones, chairman at the Ethernet Alliance, told SDxCentral.

Over its 50 year history, there has been a somewhat steady progression in Ethernet network speeds, however speed isn't the thing that interests Jones the most at the moment. Rather it's the diversity and range of standards in the market and in development.

In enterprise networks, there is a range of supported standards helping to accelerate existing 1 Gb/s networks with existing cabling. Demand for 10 GbE-based Ethernet remains strong and there is also some growth for 25 GbE, which is intended more for servers. Ethernet also has 100 GbE and 400 GbE speeds to support larger enterprise and campus needs.

Service providers are always looking for more network capacity and speed and to that end 800 GbE and soon 1.6 Tb/s Ethernet (TbE) will fit the bill.

Jones said that in the early days, the goal for each new set of specifications was to provide 10-times the speed, at only three-times the price of the existing specification. Over time what has occurred is the standards have not just been racing forward to ever faster speeds, but rather are being tailored to meet the price and performance characteristics that a given use case requires.

For example, work is ongoing to help bring Ethernet into more industrial use cases as a solution for serial connections. Ethernet is also increasingly finding its way into automotive use cases as modern vehicles rely on growing levels of compute capacity to operate and communicate.

The Ethernet Alliance is also working on certification efforts for Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). While there have long been PoE standards, there hasn't been a full-scale certification effort in the same way that there is for Wi-Fi in the wireless world. Jones said that while PoE mostly works today, there have been some instances of vendor technologies that weren't interoperable.

"We really want people to be able to buy certified devices because we want to preserve the idea that Ethernet just works and we were starting to see that breaking down with PoE," Jones said.

There have been countless competitors to Ethernet in the networking world. With specifications designed to support use cases ranging from industrial automation to enterprise, hyperscale, service provider networks and everything in between, Jones doesn't think that anyone should bet against the standard's continued dominance.

"Ethernet is the most important technology that no one ever sees," Jones said. "Very few people that use the internet understand that Ethernet is the key part of it."