Networking Vendors Jump On 400GbE in 2018

The IEEE standard for 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) was approved in December 2017. And prior to that, 400GbE had already garnered some attention. For instance, in March 2017 AT&T was able to establish a 400GbE connection between New York and Washington, D.C. 400GbE is four times as fast as 100 gig Ethernet, and it offers an economically attractive price per port and better power efficiency. During 2018, several big networking vendors announced their forays into 400GbE. Juniper Networks claimed the prize for first place, announcing in July that it planned to infuse 400GbE innovations in its PTX IP transport series, QFX data center series, and its MX WAN series. The company said it would start rolling out the updates in the second half of 2018 and into the first half of 2019. Bikash Koley, CTO of Juniper Networks, said the demand for 400 Gigabit Ethernet is being driven by a need for more cost-efficient packet transport to handle increasing bandwidth demands from video; to deal with the east-west traffic in data centers and inter-data center traffic; and to prepare for 5G.