Networking Technologies on the Rise

According to Gartner analysis, the following networking and telecommunication technologies are emerging and are expected to be adopted in the mainstream market within 5 to 10 years.

• LTE-A: Long Term Evolution Advanced for mobile networks is a technology that will increase mobile data rates to 1Gbps (Downlink) and 500 Mbps (Uplink). The maturity of this technology is however considered embryonic.
• SSL Peer-to-Peer, Site-to-Site Virtual Private Networks: This technology will be used between individual hosts to create secure SSL meshed connections that can enable peer-to-peer (P2P) communications and emulate a corporate network without the use of boundary routers and distributed remote LANs. Potential uses include virtual private network (VPN) connections to branch offices via wireless data services and contractor access scenarios.
• Energy Efficient Ethernet (802.3az): This is an IEEE initiative to create an ethernet standard that will have reduced power demands. The primary approach will be to enable Ethernet to dynamically change speed (without losing a connection) to reduce power requirements during times when demand is lower. Standardization is expected in 2010.
• Fiber Channel over Ethernet: FcoE purpose is to provide a lower overhead protocol compared with iSCSI for transporting storage traffic over 10 Gbps Ethernet connections. One of the benefits of this standard will be the consolidation of adapters/NICs and switches, instead of having redundant sets of storage and networking.
• 4G Standard: The fourth generation standard for mobile cellular networks is expected to become commercial between 2012 and 2015. Many technologies are
  competing for inclusion in the 4G standard, but they share common features such as orthogonal
  frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), software-defined radio (SDR) and multiple input, multiple
  output (MIMO). 4G technology will be packet-switched.
• VoIP Wireless WAN: Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) wireless wide-area network (WWAN) is the use of IP in the wireless link for “packetized” voice transmission, as compared with circuit-switched.