[802.3_100GCU] EEE for 40GbE?

["John D'Ambrosia" <jdambrosia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All,

 

During off-line consensus discussions, the question of EEE for 40 Gb/s Ethernet came up. Since the PAR states 'The scope of this project is to specify additions to and appropriate modifications of IEEE Std 802.3 to add 100 Gb/s 4 lane Physical Layer (PHY) specifications and management parameters for operation on backplanes and twinaxial copper cables' I contacted David Law to discuss any potential issues.

 

The conclusion was that addition of EEE for 40 Gb/s Ethernet is a significant new feature outside the existing scope, and therefore would require a PAR amendment. We therefore need to make a decision regarding whether we wish to address the 40 Gb/s Ethernet Backplane and Copper cable solutions and if we do we should begin re-evaluating our project documentation (PAR & 5C responses) for potential update and approvals.

 

As the TF's adopted schedule <http://www.ieee802.org/3/bj/timeline_0911.pdf> calls for us to go to Working Group ballot out of the Nov 2012 meeting, I would like to see us make a decision on this topic and, if necessary, begin to move forward with updating the project documentation. It needs to be realized that this would require approvals at the IEEE 802.3 Working Group, Sponsor and the IEEE-SA standards Board, some of which can only occur at a plenary meeting, with related pre-submission deadlines.

 

This is therefore one of the issues we will need to deal with at the upcoming March meeting.

 

Regards,

John D'Ambrosia