"Values up to 999G are supported, more than enough for interfaces today and the future." - Article
"When we set the upper limit of PC-DOS at 640K, we thought nobody would ever need that much memory." - Bill Gates
"When we set the upper limit of PC-DOS at 640K, we thought nobody would ever need that much memory." - Bill Gates
Especially given that IEEE 802.3dj is working on 1.6T / 1600G, and is expected to publish the final spec in Summer/Autumn 2026:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabit_Ethernet
Currently these interfaces are only on switches, but there are already NICs at 800G (P1800GO, Thor Ultra, ConnectX-8/9), so if you LACP/LAGG two together your bond is at 1600G.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Packet_Processing
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptm9h-Lf0gg ("VPP: A 1Tbps+ router with a single IPv4 address")
> We now support configuring bandwidth up to ~1 Tbps (overflow in m2sm at m > 2^40).
So I think that's it, 2^40 is ~1.099 trillion
We will be using Ethernet until the heat death of the universe, if we survive that long.
Calling something "Ethernet" amounts to a promise that:
- From far enough up the OSI sandwich*, you can pretend that it's a magically-faster version of old-fashioned Ethernet
- It sticks to broadly accepted standards, so you won't get bitten by cutting-edge or proprietary surprises