While the move to 400G Ethernet has so far been a largely hyperscaler and telco-network event, the ambition for those users, as well as data-center customers is ultimately to move to at least 800Gbps and possibly 1.6Tbps.
And while 800Gbps seems to be a solid goal for Ethernet networking visionaries, the challenges—such as the optics, power, and architecture required to make the next speed leap—seem formidable.
The need for increased speed in data centers and cloud services is driven by myriad things including the continued growth of hyperscale networks from players like Google, Amazon and Facebook, but also the more distributed cloud, artificial intelligence, video, and mobile-application workloads that current and future networks will support.
