NEWPORT BEACH, CA -- The 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance (10GEA) today announced that the IEEE P802.3ae (10 Gigabit Ethernet) Task Force has given approval for the current draft of the standard to go to Sponsor Ballot. This marks one of the final milestones in the multi-year effort towards ratification of a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) standard. It is a direct result of the resolution of all outstanding technical issues and keeps the 10GbE standard effort on track for ratification in the first half of 2002. "Essentially, all the technical work related to the formation of the standard is complete," commented Brad Booth, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE P802.3ae Task Force and Strategic Marketing Manager for Intel's LAN Access Division. "I want to thank the members of the Working Group and the Task Force for their tremendous effort the past six months. As a result of their hard work, I am proud to say we remain on schedule for completion of the standard in the first half of next year." "Customers are very excited about 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology and products. Many Ethernet companies have shipped or are about to ship 10 Gigabit Ethernet modules for switches, routers, and other devices for enterprise and service provider customers. These customers are deploying 10 Gigabit solutions in local and metro networks," stated Bruce Tolley, Vice President for the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance and Manager of Emerging Technologies for Cisco Systems. Following the recent IEEE P802.3ae Task Force meeting in Austin, Texas on November 14-16, the Working Group recirculation ballot of IEEE Draft P802.3ae/D3.4 did not generate further technical comments and was overwhelmingly approved. This permitted the P802.3ae Task Force to submit IEEE Draft P802.3ae/D4.0 for Sponsor Ballot. Also, during last month's meeting, the Task Force agreed that all technical feasibility requirements had been satisfied, a major criteria for moving to Sponsor Ballot. Work by P802.3ae Task Force feasibility subgroups and the recent 18 vendor 10 GbE technology demonstration, hosted by the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance at the NetWorld+Interop show in Atlanta in September, paved the way for this agreement. Companies that contributed products to the technology demonstration included: Agilent; AMCC; Avaya, Inc.; Broadcom, Corp.; CDT Corp.; Cisco Systems; Extreme Networks, Inc.; Foundry Networks; Intel Corp.; Ixia; Lucent Technologies; MindSpeed; Nortel Networks; PMC-Sierra, Inc.; Picolight; Spirent Communications; Tyco Electronics; and Velio Communications. The 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance was organized to facilitate and accelerate the introduction of 10 Gigabit Ethernet into the networking market. It was founded by networking industry leaders: 3Com (Nasdaq:COMS), Cisco Systems (Nasdaq:CSCO), Extreme Networks (Nasdaq:EXTR), Intel (Nasdaq:INTC), Nortel Networks (NYSE:NT), Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq:SUNW), and World Wide Packets. Additionally, the Alliance supports the activities of IEEE 802.3 Ethernet committee, fosters the development of the 802.3ae (10 Gigabit Ethernet) standard, and promotes interoperability among 10 Gigabit Ethernet products. For more information, visit www.10gea.org