Return on investment for network system upgrades are best in large cities with the highest possible customer density. Major dark fiber installation programs are ongoing in many cities. It is the only layer 2 technology to span from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps. Ethernet adapted early and quickly to emerging WDM and DWDM fiber technologies. The success of Ethernet in the LAN has created the largest chip and subsystem component market of any layer 2 technology, driving the ultimate cost of Ethernet ports and systems much lower than other layer 2 technologies.
Ethernet is now full duplex.
Wire-speed One key to meeting today's bandwidth and performance challenge is installation of network devices for the core and edge with high port density and outstanding packet forwarding characteristics. Switching capacity in the first release is 256 Gbps with maximum throughput of 160 Mbps. Support is provided for single mode and multimode fiber on gigabit Ethernet ports. While some of these capabilities and services are available today, they run outside the high-speed fabric of the network, often times on general purpose computing platforms. Hence they are slower, less reliable, and less scaleable than required to keep up with exploding IP traffic.