It appears the IEEE is going to proceed with 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps Ethernet standards. Which strongly suggests there also someday will be a 120 Gbps standard, since it maps nicely with the 40 Gbps standard server vendors prefer for short distance connections between switches and servers. The next logical step for the 100 Gbps suppliers, which tend to favor that standard for long haul and wide area network transport, isn't so clear. Following the 1, 10, 100 paradigm would suggest 1,000 Gbps, but nobody is talking about that right now. Bandwidth in the 400 Gbps up to 500 Gbps range is the sort of "next step."
