Nobody ever said the Ethernet Roadmap was a direct route. When the 25G Ethernet Consortium (Arista, Broadcom, Google, Mellanox Technologies and Microsoft) proposed single-lane 25-Gbps Ethernet and dual-lane 50-Gbps Ethernet in July 2014, it created a big fork in the roadmap. Networks had to choose between sticking with the established progression from 10 GbE to 40 GbE or adopting the 25 GbE to 50 GbE approach. Prior to 2014, networks had built their migration plans around the 10 GbE to 40 GbE technology. The introduction of the 25G lane offered a lower cost per bit and an easy transition to 50G, 100G and beyond.
