25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium Members Validate Multi-Vendor Interoperability

25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium Releases its 25G/50G Ethernet Specification to the Public in Wake of the Successful Completion of Interoperability Test Event

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- January 30, 2017 -- The 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium, established to develop 25G and 50G Ethernet specifications based upon 25 Gbps SERDES technology, today announced record participation in, and successful completion of, the first 25G and 50G Ethernet plugfest.

Held at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) in Durham, New Hampshire, the plugfest provided a forum where consortium members could collaborate and ensure interoperability of feature sets and configurability between their products. Sixteen companies attended the week-long event with a wide variety of test scenarios including auto-negotiation and stressed conditions. The testing demonstrated a high degree of multi-vendor interoperability and specification conformance.

The plugfest was highlighted by the following activities:

• Interoperability between vendors including adapters, switches, test and measurement devices, and interconnects
• Proving advanced infrastructure connectivity
• Plug and play multi-vendor compatibility
• Successful auto-negotiation
• Support for both forward and backward compatibility

The results from this plugfest are in line with what the industry requires and expects from Ethernet-based solutions and are available for download here.

“This is an encouraging sign as testing ensures vendors’ conformance to a single standard and the success at the plugfest demonstrates its maturity,” said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. “Ultimately this helps drive advanced network performance, enables the development of new innovation and benefits consumers and the industry as a whole.”

“In order to handle the increasing amount of data, server architectures all too often require multiple 10G ports. 25G Ethernet arrives just in time and has started its climb towards dominance as the leading server-to-ToR switch interconnect. As this transition occurs, plugfests assure users that 25G and greater speeds from different vendors will perform as advertised with solid plug-and-play interoperability,” said Vittal Balasubramanian, chair of the 25G/50G Ethernet Interop Committee and Principal Signal Integrity Engineer at Dell.

“Due to the success of this interoperability test event, the steering committee of the consortium has decided to make its specification available to the public,” stated Brad Booth, chair of the 25G Ethernet Consortium. “The consortium is looking forward to future events to evaluate interoperability between the consortium specification and IEEE Std. 802.3by™-2016.”

The new specification is available for download at the consortium’s website.

The 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium is open for membership to any organization willing to help facilitate industry adoption of 25G or 50G Ethernet technology. To become a member, please visit http://www.25gethernet.org/.