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The 25G Ethernet Consortium has released a 25G/50G Ethernet specification to the public:
There's already product a-plenty on the market, but it still matters that the Google-led 25G Ethernet consortium has formalised the release of its technical specification. It follows the publication of the final report from last August's 25G/50G Ethernet plugfest. The plugfest demonstrated an impressive 882 25G link configurations (843 of which passed the test), and 360 50G link configurations (341 passed).
[...] As well as the specification (published by the 25G Consortium, registration required), the group will publish a list of certified integrators. In its statement, the 25G Consortium says the plugfest also demonstrated backwards compatibility (for example with 10 Gbps Ethernet connections).
Also at FierceTelecom. Wikipedia link.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday February 02 2017, @04:37PM
It is theoretically 2.5 to 5 times as fast. In relative terms, this makes it "better". Hopefully, having a published standard will eventually lead to $5 asian-manufactured 50G switches. This would be "awesome".
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 02 2017, @05:31PM
25G fits in the same external footprint as 10G (though PCB design is a lot more fun at those rates).
25G is also a quarter of the 4-link 100G standard, allowing 100-to-4x25 in a similar way to the current 40-to-4x10 patching.
50G is interesting, but my guess is most companies will either not need it or use it as a 200G building block (CFP footprint, now running 4x25, will be upgraded to 4x50). It's just too darn hard (i.e. expensive) to get signals at that rate to bother doing it unless you absolutely need the density.