UNH-IOL to Host "10 Gig Tech Summit" and 10BASE-T Plugfest

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) announced plans to host a new "10 Gigabit Technology Summit" and the industry's first 10GBASE-T group test, or "plugfest." Although dates have not yet been set in stone, the events are planned for late summer and early fall 2007, respectively.



The 10 Gigabit Technology Summit (10 Gig Tech Summit) will create a data-center-class test network comprising participating companies' 10 Gigabit network devices. Once it has been tested and debugged, the test bed will be used to support testing and demonstration of high-level business and other 10 Gigabit-capable applications such as financial databases, storage arrays and computer clusters.



The 10 Gig Tech Summit will put the market readiness of 10 Gigabit Ethernet to the test. Test plans will encompass multiple flavors of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, including LR/SR/ER optics, LRM optics, CX4 copper, KR and KX4 backplane Ethernet ports. Possible applications for 10 Gigabit networking to be tested include iWARP and RDMA services, iSCSI targets and initiators and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching.



Strict vendor-to-vendor interoperability will be the focus of the test lab's autumn 10GBASE-T plugfest. The UNH-IOL said the group test will be open to all interested participants for a $6K testing fee and free for members of the laboratory's 10 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium (10GEC). More information is online.

http://www.iol.unh.edu