NBASE-T Alliance Pitches 2.5 and 5 GigE over Existing Copper Cables

A new NBASE-T Alliance has been established to promote the development of 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet (2.5GE and 5GE) technology for enterprise network infrastructure. Founding members include Cisco, Aquantia, Freescale and Xilinx.

NBASE-T Alliance aims to advance multi-gigabit Ethernet technology that enables faster data rates on existing enterprise cabling originally designed for 1 Gigabit Ethernet (1GbE) technology.

Most enterprise campus networks use Category 5e (Cat5e) and Category 6 (Cat6) twisted-pair copper cables, which do not support 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) up to 100 meters.  This points to the need for for intermediate rates between 1 and 10 Gigabit over existing cables.

Chris Spain, vice president of product management, Cisco, said, “The NBASE-T alliance is addressing one of the top networking challenges of today – speed in the access layer. The industry is moving to the next generation of 802.11ac – Wave 2 with theoretical data rates of up to 6.9 Gbps and actual aggregated bandwidth of up to 5 Gbps; a 1 Gbps link between the access point and switch is not sufficient. Our mission in working with the Alliance members is to provide customers with innovative technology to increase network speed without the need to upgrade the cabling infrastructure.”

Kamal Dalmia, vice president sales and marketing, Aquantia, said, “The advent of 802.11ac wave 2 has created a unique opportunity for the formation of the NBASE-T Alliance, a strong and unique group of industry leaders gathered to bring multi-Gigabit rates solutions over legacy copper cables.” Dalmia added “We’re proud to be part of the NBASE-T Alliance and are looking forward to working closely with a growing base of supporters in the market.”

http://www.nbaset.org/