To accommodate the ever increasing demand for bandwidth, communication links have evolved from copper based channels running in the MB/s range to fiber optic based links running in excess of 10 Gb/s. In modern data centers for example, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GBE) ports are commonly used as uplinks for 24- and 48-port 1 GBE switches.
Whitepaper: 100 Gigabit Ethernet Drivers and Technology
The world is currently experiencing a dramatic escalation in the demands placed upon its global data communications infrastructure. The increase is driven predominately by a shift from text only traffic with modest bandwidth requirements to full multimedia content with bandwidth requirements orders of magnitude more.