Juniper announces first 100Gbit Ethernet adapter

100Gbit Ethernet is coming to Juniper's T1600 Core Router later this year

Juniper Networks has unveiled a 100Gbit Ethernet adapter, which it claims is the first in the industry. However, while the adapter for its core router line is not due to ship before the end of this year, official standards for 100Gbit have yet to be finalised, and are not due to be ratified until 2010.

10Gbit deployments are still at a relatively early stage of deployment, but Juniper said that rapidly increasing network traffic will soon require even faster network interfaces, and that its 100Gbit Ethernet technology will provide long-term investment protection for carriers and datacentres.

"100Gbit Ethernet has always been inevitable; it has just been a question of when. Now trends such as cloud computing, datacentre consolidation and virtualisation are making the need for 100Gbit Ethernet more acute and urgent than ever before," said Juniper senior vice president Opher Kahane.

The 100Gbit interface card will be showcased at Interop Tokyo this week, and will be used in pilot customer deployments on Juniper's T1600 router before the end of 2009, according to the firm.

US carrier Verizon said that it is looking at a commercial rollout in the core of its network during 2010.

The IEEE P802.3ba task force working on 100Gbit Ethernet is expected to complete the standard by this summer, and ratification is due in 2010.