10 Gigabit Ethernet / IEEE 802.3ae￿Only optical support

￿850nm (MM) / 1310nm /1550 nm (SM only)

￿No copper PHY anymore !

￿Different implementations at the moment – standardization not finished!￿8B/10B (IBM), SONET/SDH support, …￿XAUI ("Zowie") instead of GMII

(C) Herbert Haas 2005/03/11

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10 GE only supports optical links. Note that GE is actually a synchronous protocol! There is no statistical multiplexing done at the physical layer anymore, because optical switching at that bit rate only allows synchronous transmissions.

The GMII has been replaced (or enhanced) by the so-called XAUI, known as "Zowie".

Note: At the time of writing this module, the 10 GE standard was not fully finished. Though, some vendors already offer 10 GE interface cards for their switches.

These interfaces are very expensive but the investment ensures backward compatibility to lower Ethernet rates and at the same time provides a very high speed WAN interface.

An alternative technology would be OC192, which requires a very expensive and complex SONET/SDH environment.

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