A Mid-Year Note from the Chair

The Ethernet Ecosystem is Continuing to Grow & Thrive Despite the Pandemic

Time flies. It feels like yesterday that I wrote the 2021 end of year post, but here we are in July 2022. It has been a busy start to the year, even as difficult conditions have persisted.

The Ethernet industry is showing good growth in the face of difficult business conditions. According to Dell’Oro, “Data center capex grew double-digits year-over-year in 1Q 2022 despite persistent supply chain constraints,” and “Remarkably and despite ongoing supply challenges, 1Q 2022 marked the fourth consecutive quarter of high single-to-double-digit growth in the market.”

We have new members

Members who Upgraded to Principal
New Members at the Participating Level
New Member at the PoE Level

A Return to In-Person Events

We are back to in-person events with OFC in February and the HSN Plugfest in April. The July IEEE 802 plenary, including the 802.3 Working Group, was also back to face-to-face attendance (with support for remote attendees as well) in Montreal, Canada. It was good to be able to catch up with colleagues in the same room instead of over a video conference. The activity in 802.3 is not slowing down with 14 active task forces addressing speeds from 10Mb/s to 1.6Tb/s.

Additional Activities

• In February, we released the 2022 version of the always popular Ethernet Roadmap.
• We have approved UL Solutions as an authorized test lab for Gen 2 of the PoE Certification program.
• We have had a very successful start to our Technology Webinar Series with a number of webinars relating to Ethernet in the Operational Technology (OT) space.
• We have continued rolling out additional episodes in the “Voices of Ethernet” series with 7 interviews now available.
• We have new Board members and committee/sub-committee chairs.

I’m proud of what the organization has achieved so far this year, and I expect that to continue for the remainder of 2022. Thank you for coming on this journey with us.

– Peter Jones