NBASE-T Alliance shows deployment-ready solutions for 5G Ethernet

“NBASE-T product support continues to grow and deployment of these products is already taking place in enterprise and campus networks with healthcare, education and hospitality markets leading the way,” said LK Bhupathi, chair of the Marketing Work Group, NBASE-T Alliance. “Our demonstrations show how NBASE-T solutions are delivering on the promise to significantly increase network bandwidth and greatly enhance user experience in enterprises, small-medium businesses and residential environments by leveraging their existing cabling infrastructure ensuring business continuity and avoiding costly upgrades.”

More than a dozen alliance members are already shipping products based on the NBASE-T specification, leading the way for the Dell’Oro Group’s prediction there will be a doubling of ports shipped every year in the 2.5 and 5G Ethernet market over the next 3 years. Multiple live demos will show real use cases for NBASE-T products, demonstrating the transport of data at 2.5 and 5G Ethernet rates across 802.11ac Wave2 access points, network-attached storage (NAS) devices, PC platforms, Server NICs, enterprise-class switches and PoE endpoints. Connectivity between these products will be based on a wide range of cabling configurations including Cat5e, Cat6 and Cat6a, with lengths extending up to 100m.

Working Toward a 2.5/5G Ethernet Standard The availability of the NBASE-T specification has allowed members to quickly develop and test their solutions, thereby accelerating their proliferation in the market, as well as helping streamline the development of a 2.5/5G Ethernet standard known as IEEE 802.3bz. The technical baselines adopted by the 802.3bz Task Force are consistent with the NBASE-T specification and all NBASE-T products are expected to be compatible with the final standard, which is on track for ratification later this year.