Putting 2.5GE & 5GE to the Test

Overview

In offices all over the world, the use of WI-FI connected devices like laptops, smartphones and tablets and bandwidth-hungry applications has grown rapidly while many companies support a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy, permitting employees to use personally owned, WIFI connected devices at work. To alleviate performance bottlenecks a new WIFI standard IEEE 802.11ac increases data rates between the WIFI Access Points (AP) and the connected end devices. And as the industry moves to 802.11ac Wave 2 even more bandwidth between the APs and switches in the access network will be needed.

In most WI-FI installations the connection between AP and switch is a 1 Gigabit/s Ethernet link carried over an electrical cable. The need for bandwidth could be solved by upgrading the connection between AP and switch to 10 Gigabit/s Ethernet, being the next higher data rate with the current standards. Unfortunately the cables between AP and switch will in most cases be unable to support 10 Gigabit/s Ethernet reliably. Refitting buildings with cables supporting 10 Gigabit/s Ethernet will be an expensive option. This has created a need for Ethernet rates higher than 1 Gigabit/s, which can run on existing cables and provide increased bandwidth.

As a result 2.5 Gigabit/s Ethernet (2.5GE) and 5 Gigabit/s Ethernet (5GE) over electrical cables are now standardized providing 2.5 or 5 times more bandwidth on existing cables allowing companies to protect their infrastructure investment. This creates a demand for test solutions that can verify the new speeds.

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