IEEE is a professional association known for creating technology standards, producing publications, and hosting activities both for educational and professional development. If you are browsing this website on a high speed connection you are almost definitely using IEEE 802.3 or IEEE 802.11 which are more commonly known as Ethernet and WIFI, respectively. IEEE constantly evolves their standards: speeds get faster, WIFI-n allowed you to leave 2.4 GHz, and other changes as needs progress over time.

Change for the future.

IEEE recently appointed John D’Ambrosia to chair a group to determine how much demand will be required from Ethernet in the future. This committee could potentially end up producing a standard for Terabit network connections should demand deem it necessary.

The committee is being very cautious this time around with respect to how much speed is required for their next standard. The prior standard, 802.3ab, was discussed in 2005 and determined that 100 Gbps was a necessary advancement. Later it was discovered that many vendors did not require more than 40 Gbps and would delay adoption for several years. Regardless of whether they settle on Terabit or 400 Gigabit, this standard will take years to develop with Terabit taking even longer. Their findings about demand will be published early next year.