100 Gigabit Ethernet


40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet are groups of computer networking technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at rates of 40 and 100 gigabits per second, respectively. These technologies offer significantly higher speeds than 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The technology was first defined by the IEEE 802.3ba-2010 standard and later by the 802.3bg-2011, 802.3bj-2014, and 802.3bm-2015 standards.
The standards define numerous port types with different optical and electrical interfaces and different numbers of optical fiber strands per port. Short distances over twinaxial cable are supported while standards for fiber reach up to 80 km.

Standards development

On July 18, 2006, a call for interest for a High Speed Study Group to investigate new standards for high speed Ethernet was held at the IEEE 802.3 plenary meeting in San Diego.
The first 802.3 HSSG study group meeting was held in September 2006. In June 2007, a trade group called "Road to 100G" was formed after the NXTcomm trade show in Chicago.
On December 5, 2007, the Project Authorization Request for the P802.3ba 40 Gbit/s and 100 Gbit/s Ethernet Task Force was approved with the following project scope:

The purpose of this project is to extend the 802.3 protocol to operating speeds of 40 Gbit/s and 100 Gbit/s in order to provide a significant increase in bandwidth while maintaining maximum compatibility with the installed base of 802.3 interfaces, previous investment in research and development, and principles of network operation and management. The project is to provide for the interconnection of equipment satisfying the distance requirements of the intended applications.

The 802.3ba task force met for the first time in January 2008. This standard was approved at the June 2010 IEEE Standards Board meeting under the name IEEE Std 802.3ba-2010.
The first 40 Gbit/s Ethernet Single-mode Fibre PMD study group meeting was held in January 2010 and on March 25, 2010 the P802.3bg Single-mode Fibre PMD Task Force was approved for the 40 Gbit/s serial SMF PMD.
The scope of this project is to add a single-mode fiber Physical Medium Dependent option for serial 40 Gbit/s operation by specifying additions to, and appropriate modifications of, IEEE Std 802.3-2008 as amended by the IEEE P802.3ba project.

On June 17, 2010, the IEEE 802.3ba standard was approved In March 2011 the IEEE 802.3bg standard was approved. On September 10, 2011, the P802.3bj 100 Gbit/s Backplane and Copper Cable task force was approved.
The scope of this project is to specify additions to and appropriate modifications of IEEE Std 802.3 to add 100 Gbit/s 4-lane Physical Layer specifications and management parameters for operation on backplanes and twinaxial copper cables, and specify optional Energy Efficient Ethernet for 40 Gbit/s and 100 Gbit/s operation over backplanes and copper cables.

On May 10, 2013, the P802.3bm 40 Gbit/s and 100 Gbit/s Fiber Optic Task Force was approved.
This project is to specify additions to and appropriate modifications of IEEE Std 802.3 to add 100 Gbit/s Physical Layer specifications and management parameters, using a four-lane electrical interface for operation on multimode and single-mode fiber optic cables, and to specify optional Energy Efficient Ethernet for 40 Gbit/s and 100 Gbit/s operation over fiber optic cables. In addition, to add 40 Gbit/s Physical Layer specifications and management parameters for operation on extended reach single-mode fiber optic cables.

Also on May 10, 2013, the P802.3bq 40GBASE-T Task Force was approved.
Specify a Physical Layer for operation at 40 Gbit/s on balanced twisted-pair copper cabling, using existing Media Access Control, and with extensions to the appropriate physical layer management parameters.

On June 12, 2014, the IEEE 802.3bj standard was approved. On February 16, 2015, the IEEE 802.3bm standard was approved.
On May 12, 2016, the IEEE P802.3cd Task Force started working to define next generation two-lane 100 Gbit/s PHY.
On May 14, 2018, the PAR for the IEEE P802.3ck Task Force was approved. The scope of this project is to specify additions to and appropriate modifications of IEEE Std 802.3 to add Physical Layer specifications and Management Parameters for 100 Gbit/s, 200 Gbit/s, and 400 Gbit/s electrical interfaces based on 100 Gbit/s signaling.
On December 5, 2018 the IEEE-SA Board approved the P802.3cd standard
On November 12, 2018, the IEEE P802.3ct Task Force started working to define PHY supporting 100 Gbit/s operation on a single wavelength capable of at least 80 km over a DWDM system.
In May 2019, the IEEE P802.3cu Task Force started working to define single-wavelength 100 Gb/s PHYs for operation over SMF with lengths up to at least 2 km and 10 km.

Early products

Optical signal transmission over a nonlinear medium is principally an analog design problem. As such, it has evolved slower than digital circuit lithography. This explains why 10 Gbit/s transport systems existed since the mid-1990s, while the first forays into 100 Gbit/s transmission happened about 15 years later – a 10x speed increase over 15 years is far slower than the 2x speed per 1.5 years typically cited for Moore's law.
Nevertheless, at least five firms made customer announcements for 100 Gbit/s transport systems by August 2011 – with varying degrees of capabilities. Although vendors claimed that 100 Gbit/s light paths could use existing analog optical infrastructure, deployment of high-speed technology was tightly controlled and extensive interoperability tests were required before moving them into service.
Designing routers or switches which support 100 Gbit/s interfaces is difficult. The need to process a 100 Gbit/s stream of packets at line rate without reordering within IP/MPLS microflows is one reason for this.
, most components in the 100 Gbit/s packet processing path were not readily available off-the-shelf or require extensive qualification and co-design. Another problem is related to the low-output production of 100 Gbit/s optical components, which were also not easily availableespecially in pluggable, long-reach or tunable laser flavors.

Backplane

announced backplane modules in October 2010.

Multimode fiber

In 2009, Mellanox and Reflex Photonics announced modules based on the CFP agreement.

Single mode fiber

, Sumitomo Electric Industries, and OpNext all demonstrated singlemode 40 or 100 Gbit/s Ethernet modules based on the C Form-factor Pluggable agreement at the European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communication in 2009.

Compatibility

Optical fiber IEEE 802.3ba implementations were not compatible with the numerous 40 and 100 Gbit/s line rate transport systems because they had different optical layer and modulation formats as the IEEE 802.3ba Port Types show. In particular, existing 40 Gbit/s transport solutions that used dense wavelength-division multiplexing to pack four 10 Gbit/s signals into one optical medium were not compatible with the IEEE 802.3ba standard, which used either coarse WDM in 1310 nm wavelength region with four 25 Gbit/s or four 10 Gbit/s channels, or parallel optics with four or ten optical fibers per direction.

Test and measurement

introduced the ConnectX-4 100GbE single and dual port adapter in November 2014. In the same period, Mellanox introduced availability of 100GbE copper and fiber cables. In June 2015, Mellanox introduced the Spectrum 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100GbE switch models.

Aitia

introduced the C-GEP FPGA-based switching platform in February 2013. Aitia also produce 100G/40G Ethernet PCS/PMA+MAC IP cores for FPGA developers and academic researchers.

Arista

introduced the 7500E switch in April 2013. In July 2014, Arista introduced the 7280E switch.

Extreme Networks

introduced a four-port 100GbE module for the BlackDiamond X8 core switch in November 2012.

Dell

's Force10 switches support 40 Gbit/s interfaces. These 40 Gbit/s fiber-optical interfaces using QSFP+ transceivers can be found on the Z9000 distributed core switches, S4810 and S4820 as well as the blade-switches MXL and the IO-Aggregator. The Dell PowerConnect 8100 series switches also offer 40 Gbit/s QSFP+ interfaces.

Chelsio

introduced 40 Gbit/s Ethernet network adapters in June 2013.

Telesoft Technologies Ltd

announced the dual 100G PCIe accelerator card, part of the MPAC-IP series. Telesoft also announced the STR 400G and the 100G MCE.

Commercial trials and deployments

Unlike the "race to 10 Gbit/s" that was driven by the imminent need to address growth pains of the Internet in the late 1990s, customer interest in 100 Gbit/s technologies was mostly driven by economic factors. The common reasons to adopt the higher speeds were:
In November 2007, Alcatel-Lucent held the first field trial of 100 Gbit/s optical transmission. Completed over a live, in-service 504 kilometre portion of the Verizon network, it connected the Florida cities of Tampa and Miami.
100GbE interfaces for the 7450 ESS/7750 SR service routing platform were first announced in June 2009, with field trials with Verizon, T-Systems and Portugal Telecom taking place in June–September 2010. In September 2009, Alcatel-Lucent combined the 100G capabilities of its IP routing and optical transport portfolio in an integrated solution called Converged Backbone Transformation.
In June 2011, Alcatel-Lucent introduced a packet processing architecture known as FP3, advertised for 400 Gbit/s rates. Alcatel-Lucent announced the XRS 7950 core router in May 2012.

Brocade

introduced their first 100GbE products in September 2010. In June 2011, the new product went live at the AMS-IX traffic exchange point in Amsterdam.

Cisco

and Comcast announced their 100GbE trials in June 2008. However, it is doubtful that this transmission could approach 100 Gbit/s speeds when using a 40 Gbit/s per slot CRS-1 platform for packet processing. Cisco's first deployment of 100GbE at AT&T and Comcast took place in April 2011. In the same year, Cisco tested the 100GbE interface between CRS-3 and a new generation of their ASR9K edge router model. In 2017, Cisco announced a 32 port 100GbE Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series switch and in 2019 the modular Catalyst 9600 Series switch with a 100GbE line card

Huawei

In October 2008, Huawei presented their first 100GbE interface for their NE5000e router. In September 2009, Huawei also demonstrated an end-to-end 100 Gbit/s link. It was mentioned that Huawei's products had the self-developed NPU "Solar 2.0 PFE2A" onboard and was using pluggable optics in CFP form-factor.
In a mid-2010 product brief, the NE5000e linecards were given the commercial name LPUF-100 and credited with using two Solar-2.0 NPUs per 100GbE port in opposite configuration. Nevertheless, in October 2010, the company referenced shipments of NE5000e to Russian cell operator "Megafon" as "40GBPS/slot" solution, with "scalability up to" 100 Gbit/s.
In April 2011, Huawei announced that the NE5000e was updated to carry 2x100GbE interfaces per slot using LPU-200 linecards. In a related solution brief, Huawei reported 120 thousand Solar 1.0 integrated circuits shipped to customers, but no Solar 2.0 numbers were given. Following the August 2011 trial in Russia, Huawei reported paying 100 Gbit/s DWDM customers, but no 100GbE shipments on NE5000e.

Juniper

announced 100GbE for its T-series routers in June 2009. The 1x100GbE option followed in Nov 2010, when a joint press release with academic backbone network Internet2 marked the first production 100GbE interfaces going live in real network.
In the same year, Juniper demonstrated 100GbE operation between core and edge routers. Juniper, in March 2011, announced first shipments of 100GbE interfaces to a major North American service provider.
In April 2011, Juniper deployed a 100GbE system on the UK education network JANET. In July 2011, Juniper announced 100GbE with Australian ISP iiNet on their T1600 routing platform. Juniper started shipping the MPC3E line card for the MX router, a 100GbE CFP MIC, and a 100GbE LR4 CFP optics in March 2012. In Spring 2013, Juniper Networks announced the availability of the MPC4E line card for the MX router that includes 2 100GbE CFP slots and 8 10GbE SFP+ interfaces.
In June 2015, Juniper Networks announced the availability of its CFP-100GBASE-ZR module which is a plug & play solution that brings 80 km 100GbE to MX & PTX based networks. The CFP-100GBASE-ZR module uses DP-QPSK modulation and coherent receiver technology with an optimized DSP and FEC implementation. The low-power module can be directly retrofitted into existing CFP sockets on MX and PTX routers.

Standards

The IEEE 802.3 working group is concerned with the maintenance and extension of the Ethernet data communications standard. Additions to the 802.3 standard are performed by task forces which are designated by one or two letters. For example, the 802.3z task force drafted the original Gigabit Ethernet standard.
802.3ba is the designation given to the higher speed Ethernet task force which completed its work to modify the 802.3 standard to support speeds higher than 10 Gbit/s in 2010.
The speeds chosen by 802.3ba were 40 and 100 Gbit/s to support both end-point and link aggregation needs respectively. This was the first time two different Ethernet speeds were specified in a single standard. The decision to include both speeds came from pressure to support the 40 Gbit/s rate for local server applications and the 100 Gbit/s rate for internet backbones. The standard was announced in July 2007 and was ratified on June 17, 2010.
form factor
The 40/100 Gigabit Ethernet standards encompass a number of different Ethernet physical layer specifications. A networking device may support different PHY types by means of pluggable modules. Optical modules are not standardized by any official standards body but are in multi-source agreements. One agreement that supports 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet is the C Form-factor Pluggable MSA which was adopted for distances of 100+ meters. QSFP and CXP connector modules support shorter distances.
The standard supports only full-duplex operation. Other objectives include:
The following nomenclature is used for the physical layers:
Physical layer40 Gigabit Ethernet100 Gigabit Ethernet
Backplanen.a.100GBASE-KP4
Improved Backplane40GBASE-KR4100GBASE-KR4
100GBASE-KR2
7 m over twinax copper cable40GBASE-CR4100GBASE-CR10
100GBASE-CR4
100GBASE-CR2
30 m over "Cat.8" twisted pair40GBASE-Tn.a.
100 m over OM3 MMF40GBASE-SR4100GBASE-SR10
100GBASE-SR4
100GBASE-SR2
125 m over OM4 MMF40GBASE-SR4100GBASE-SR10
100GBASE-SR4
100GBASE-SR2
500 m over SMF, serialn.a.100GBASE-DR
2 km over SMF, serial40GBASE-FR100GBASE-FR1
10 km over SMF40GBASE-LR4100GBASE-LR4
100GBASE-LR1
40 km over SMF40GBASE-ER4100GBASE-ER4
80 km over SMFn.a.100GBASE-ZR

The 100 m laser optimized multi-mode fiber objective was met by parallel ribbon cable with 850 nm wavelength 10GBASE-SR like optics. The backplane objective with 4 lanes of 10GBASE-KR type PHYs. The copper cable objective is met with 4 or 10 differential lanes using SFF-8642 and SFF-8436 connectors. The 10 and 40 km 100 Gbit/s objectives with four wavelengths of 25 Gbit/s optics and the 10 km 40 Gbit/s objective with four wavelengths of 10 Gbit/s optics.
In January 2010 another IEEE project authorization started a task force to define a 40 Gbit/s serial single-mode optical fiber standard. This was approved as standard 802.3bg in March 2011. It used 1550 nm optics, had a reach of 2 km and was capable of receiving 1550 nm and 1310 nm wavelengths of light. The capability to receive 1310 nm light allows it to inter-operate with a longer reach 1310 nm PHY should one ever be developed. 1550 nm was chosen as the wavelength for 802.3bg transmission to make it compatible with existing test equipment and infrastructure.
In December 2010, a 10x10 multi-source agreement began to define an optical Physical Medium Dependent sublayer and establish compatible sources of low-cost, low-power, pluggable optical transceivers based on 10 optical lanes at 10 Gbit/s each. The 10x10 MSA was intended as a lower cost alternative to 100GBASE-LR4 for applications which do not require a link length longer than 2 km. It was intended for use with standard single mode G.652.C/D type low water peak cable with ten wavelengths ranging from 1523 to 1595 nm. The founding members were Google, Brocade Communications, JDSU and Santur.
Other member companies of the 10x10 MSA included MRV, Enablence, Cyoptics, AFOP, oplink, Hitachi Cable America, AMS-IX, EXFO, Huawei, Kotura, Facebook and Effdon when the 2 km specification was announced in March 2011.
The 10X10 MSA modules were intended to be the same size as the C Form-factor Pluggable specifications.
On June 12, 2014, the 802.3bj standard was approved. The 802.3bj standard specifies 100 Gbit/s 4x25G PHYs - 100GBASE-KR4, 100GBASE-KP4 and 100GBASE-CR4 - for backplane and twin-ax cable.
On February 16, 2015, the 802.3bm standard was approved. The 802.3bm standard specifies a lower-cost optical 100GBASE-SR4 PHY for MMF and a four-lane chip-to-module and chip-to-chip electrical specification. The detailed objectives for the 802.3bm project can be found on the 802.3 website.
On December 5, 2018, the 802.3cd standard was approved. The 802.3cd standard specifies PHYs using 50Gbps lanes - 100GBASE-KR for backplane, 100GBASE-CR2 for twin-ax cable, 100GBASE-SR2 for MMF and using 100Gbps signalling 100GBASE-DR for SMF.
On May 14, 2018, the 802.3ck project was approved. This has objectives to:
On November 12, 2018, the IEEE P802.3ct Task Force started working to define PHY supporting 100 Gbit/s operation on a single wavelength capable of at least 80 km over a DWDM system.
In May 2019, the IEEE P802.3cu Task Force started working to define single-wavelength 100 Gb/s PHYs for operation over SMF with lengths up to at least 2 km and 10 km.
In June 2020, the IEEE P802.3db Task Force started working to define a physical layer specification that supports 100 Gb/s operation over 1 pair1 of MMF with lengths up to at least 50 m.

100G interface types

Coding schemes

; 10.3125 Gbaud with NRZ and 64b66b on 10 lanes per direction
; 25.78125 Gbaud with NRZ and 64b66b on 4 lanes per direction
; 25.78125 Gbaud with NRZ and RS-FEC on 4 lanes per direction
; 26.5625 Gbaud with PAM4 and RS-FEC on 2 lanes per direction
; 53.125 Gbaud with PAM4 and RS-FEC on 1 lane per direction
; 30.14475 Gbaud with DP-QPSK and SD-FEC on 1 lane per direction
; 13.59375 Gbaud with PAM4, KP4 specific coding and RS-FEC on 4 lanes per direction

40G interface types

;
CL73 allows communication between the 2 PHYs to exchange technical capability pages, and both PHYs come to a common speed and media type. Completion of CL73 initiates CL72. CL72 allows each of the 4 lanes' transmitters to adjust pre-emphasis via feedback from the link partner.
NameClauseMediaMedia
count		Symbol rate
Gigabaud		Symbol codingBreakout to 4×10G
40GBASE-T113Twisted pair copper cable1↕ × 43.2PAM16 × not possible

;

Chip-to-chip/chip-to-module interfaces

;
;
;
;

Pluggable optics standards

;
;

Optical connectors

Short reach interfaces use Multiple-Fiber Push-On/Pull-off optical connectors. 40GBASE-SR4 and 100GBASE-SR4 use MPO-12 while 100GBASE-SR10 uses MPO-24 with one optical lane per fiber strand.
Long reach interfaces use duplex LC connectors with all optical lanes multiplexed with WDM.